Gustave Caillebotte:
Study of a Man with Hands in His Pockets (1893)

"The Break seems beginningless until it doesn't."

Autumn sends a postcard sometime in August to preface the coming season. After a forever hot spell, one morning brings goose flesh or the strong suggestion that it might still exist, a distinct impossibility just the day before. Nothing never ends, not even nothing, not even that seemingly endless heat, the one that had so rudely interrupted Summer. Summer seems three separate seasons now that global warming has imprinted her presence. Early Summer's an extension of Spring, Mid-Summer's an ordeal, and Later Summer's Early Fall, clearly not yet Autumn, but reminiscent of it in the early mornings and later evenings. Later Summer seems a welcome respite, a Break from the frightening Mid-Summer melting point.

Cool eventually intrudes. It always surprises, for it delays its arrival until I've just about convinced myself that the expected will not be returning, until after I've almost lost my memory of how it might be instead. I start resigning my agency, surrendering to my apparent fate, starting to believe that it's too late for anything different to emerge, that it will forever be changed. My memory fails me. I forget how it used to be, surprisingly always seeming fresh and different to me after an overlong overwhelming period. I had pretty much become focused upon coping, upon avoiding, upon deferring. I lived by my excuses in lieu of living, since living came to seem too dangerous to attempt. I nurtured a deepening contempt for my context, which seemed just out to get me. I grew exceedingly weary.

All I ever needed was a breath of promise, a tiny foreshadowing that rescue might be forthcoming. I proved once again a man of such little faith that I could not find the patience to simply trust that I had not been abandoned there to a certain fate, too late for salvation and way too early to even think about redemption. I thrive on the shoulders of these seasons, the beginnings and endings, not in their middles. The dead of Summer seems so similar to the dead of Winter, the Break feels every bit like Spring. I don my down vest in early August, grateful for this intrusion, this reminder that something always eventually turns into something else, that nothing, not even nothing, is actually endless. The Break seems beginningless until it doesn't.

I wonder what I've squandered through the heat spell. Did I cede too well to its overwhelming presence? Should I have found better ways to outsmart it? Might have I been better prepared? Could I have gleaned better lessons? Midsummer heat might be a blessing, the kind that just seems curse. I can imagine how it might have been much worse than it was. We could have had fires. We could have insisted upon continuing working as if we weren't influenced by its presence, defiant and self-destructive. We could have tried to beat it and been badly beaten by it instead. The Break means the ordeal's finished, or just as good as done, anyway. We've more than dreamed the promised land now, we've experienced it, if only a nibble. More's surely coming, if not as Reward, then as just deserts or something.

———

Gimme a Break!
Early or later, the Break eventually arrives. Barriers which seemed unapproachable yesterday start falling. Over-long delayed chores almost complete themselves. A fresh perspective comes which cleans the lenses and enlivens the spirit. I dare to dream again after long, sweaty, fit-filled nights. The dentist corrected the bite on my left side this week. The right side's next. My jaw fits my face again. I expect my diction to improve. I'm supposed to visit an ophthalmologist next week to see about getting my cataract implants zapped to eliminate some schmutz that naturally builds up over time. I expect my night vision to return and the glimmering to be less blinding. Opportunities emerge with even more coming. I might insist that the excessive heat might have burned a certain sense of hopelessness out of my spirit. If so, good riddance! The last thing I, or anyone, needs is a certain sense of hopelessness. We need a Break!

I began my writing week describing the Blistering weather and its effect on my routines. "Nostalgia omits many details only presence can ever sense."

I visited an old favorite bookstore and experienced what I recognized as a SynchronicitySwarm. "Back when I was pretending to be a scholar, I'd immerse myself deep into the library stacks, hoping some book containing the answer I was seeking would fall off the shelf at my feet. It will surprise nobody, I suspect, if I confess that this tactic actually worked, though the research librarian remains a doubtful skeptic."

I next wrote about a proud family tradition, the creation of a birthday poem on a paper bag in BagPoem. This was the most popular posting of the week. "I supposed there could be worse fates than smothering on tradition."

I took a walk along once familiar streets, reflecting about how the present manages to appear via Vectoring. "We too casually consider causes and effects when we most likely never imagine the most likely causes, but we only imagine that causes and effects influence what manifests."

I next led a guided tour of the process I employ to produce each of my blog entries in Bloggering. "Efficiency's not even a distant issue. I seem to need to work in stone tablets."

I then considered penance and punishment while sitting in a dentist's chair, concluding that I was experiencing a curious kind of Reward. "What might happen if I presumed the grand scales balanced, with no penances left to perform, no shortfalls remaining for which to dedicate myself to compensate?"

I finished my writing week by not quite finishing something and realizing that finished often emerges from a series of practice Fittings. "We'd halve the distance to finished on the next iteration, then halve it again on the following one, always engaging in Zeno's Paradox as our sole means of delivering anything, always delivering more Fittings than finished systems."

The final Blistering week of Midsummer's probably behind me now, but leaving the strong memory of a SynchronicitySwarm, a fresh BagPoem, and some questions about the actual effects of causes. I continued Bloggering through it, chiseling in virtual stone, the effort seemingly its own Reward and not merely punishment, and ended my writing week with not an actual ending at all, but with another in a seemingly endlessly series of Fittings, progressing exclusively via Zeno's propulsive calculus. We might never actually arrive, but we travel well. Thank you so much for following along here. I deeply appreciate your presence.

©2022 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Againing, #PureSchmaltz