Autumn
and musings on time
I am writing this as dusk starts to settle around me, minutes earlier than yesterday, some time earlier than the peak of summer. There has been a definite chill in the air, and the winds have been whipping up, close to a storm.
It seems like that back to school feeling is very present for many: whether they have children or not; no matter how many years have passed since their last days in education. September is like a mini new year for many. It’s a bit of a wake up call to the year, already three-quarters of the way through, but with still enough time to tick off those things you said you’d do.
Almost everyone I’ve spoken to recently has talked about time and specifically how it tends to behave in strange, indescribable ways. Children who were only just babies going off to university. Work that was almost complete somehow taking days to finish off. And glitches in time, when you have the uncanny feeling of being somewhere all over again - just this time in an older body. More concrete than deja vu, but no less unnerving.
In this piece, I was unnerved, but also strangely grateful for the opportunity to reexperience moments from my childhood that have remained clear in my memory…
