Wednesday, June 14, 2023
It’s midway through a rainy, stormy, cool and clouded June. The river’s up, frothing in a usually-sedate channel. I just pulled a load of laundry off the line outside, wetter than when I hung it up three days ago, and scattered it over surfaces inside the house before it could get rained on again.
My garden is yellowing in the moisture and filtered light, battered by hail. We left town for a few days and the grass tripled in height. Our negligence in mowing has tiny bees zipping around wildflowers we didn’t know were growing. Green-white flower spiders hide atop the chives. Two days in a row: A double handful of strawberries, vivid standouts in a bed half consumed by grass, bindweed, and runaway oregano.
There were grim levels of smoke, for a while, and then it drifted east. A round of those “[city] has among worst air quality in the world” headlines. I expect there to be smoke again before long. Canada is still burning, after all, and it’s only June. There’s allergy-generating pollen now. Not as bad as some years, worse than others. I can breathe, a lot of the time. My eyes itch but they aren’t streaming yet, or burning so much that I just have to close them and lay down.
I feel like I’m suspended for a moment between things that will force me to hide indoors, only half-able to think, my whole self just rendered useless by one irritant or another. Part of this I’m sure is just the faltering strength of being 40-something rather than 30-something. The shift in my relative position with respect to infirmity, the limits of the self and the system it inhabits, mortality. But then part of it feels like something that’s changed about the world. I suppose because it is.