Civil Twilight

The air changes in Britain around the end of July and suddenly it starts to feel like autumn, even if it's hot for days and days as it is now with climate change. I couldn't sleep for a week this year, and I felt like the summer became a liminal space, me waking with surprise to find Yoko still here and the children going about the day like all of this is normal. It was my holiday, but resting has been out of the question — this is my fault, blame me for making it harder for myself than it needs to be. I come from a lineage of men that fidget in any queue, that pace outside of public restrooms where people seem to be taking too long inside. We talk to managers, we complain about teenage staff. Of course, now, I just think it, think that I would do those sorts of things if I were in some way more unhinged than I am, but I've managed to just internalise it. Surely I've lost a year or two of life to worry and senseless passive rage.

The lockdown eased, but not entirely, we decided this was the year to go camping. We got tents and supplies and headed to the peaks to hike and look up occasionally at the clouds to tell if the rain was coming or not. Most of the time, three days out of four, it was raining, of course — this is Britain after all, and it should be expected, but we did our best, eating well and being patient with each other. We came home and unpacked our equipment to dry in the sun and there was a downpour and it got soaked again. 

Now that the summer is ending or ended, civil twilight — the proper name for dawn when the sun is six degrees below the horizon — is later than it is in June and July, but still, you can get up around five for a run starting at quarter to six and be okay. There are no cars and it seems lighter when you get outside and find your rhythm. Of course then every minute of the run it gets lighter and lighter and suddenly you wish you had your sunglasses. This morning at least, I felt that way, when I got up and set out for a twenty-mile run. At six, the canals are quiet and when I do meet runners, they're not, the sort of people running two together and not making any space, the sort of people I find myself cursing at under my breath. At six in the morning on a Sunday, it's only the people that care, that have invested something and you can ignore them, or give them a knowing wave when you pass, but they never get in your way. I found my rhythm today around the fifth mile and made my way south towards Alvechurch, so far that the towpath stopped being paved around the point I turned back. The sun came up slowly and the all of a sudden and I drank through my Camelbak and was home, peeling off my clothes in the downstairs toilet before anyone else had woken up. 

On Friday I went back to work for the first time since July and it felt eerie in the way that this is what it is now. A colleague was leaving and of course, we couldn't shake hands or hug like you normally might, but this is all fine with me because there are now clear rules about simply not touching others and you don't have to do any guesswork about what is or isn't expected of you. I had files open on my computer that I was supposed to work on, but I never got around to it seriously. There is so much bad news now that I've lost my expectation that things will be better. I said last night, to Naomi as I was talking about my run and coming home, 'I'll see you in the morning' and after a beat, we both said at the same time 'hopefully', and I immediately felt guilty for all the pessimism I've brought to the Pihlajas of Harborne over the years.

Obviously, good things can happen despite the pessimism. Everyone is healthy and happy in the house, despite death being one the edge of our experiences: terminally ill family members, or pre-cancerous blemishes, or knife attacks, or the virus, of course. This morning, at around the fourteenth mile I felt good for a moment and my pace ticked up. Nothing remarkable, but I ran one mile fifteen seconds faster than the others. It came out of the blue and I wondered why I was just suddenly energetic. What had gotten into me. It faded, of course, but having felt it, having it come up, reminds me that it is still there, ready to come out of me as long as I didn't give up.