When the light changes

Among my several quirks is a peculiar sensitivity to the way the sunlight changes in spring and autumn.

At least, I think it's that. The angle of the planet in relation to the sun? Or the length of the days. Who knows.

But it happens, reliably, in spring and autumn. The sunlight inspires a feeling of deep bereavement. It seems to come on overnight. Or, rather, as soon as I see the light in the morning of a particular day.

I'm sort of used to it and don't start to think of all the things I could be sad about (work drying up, loneliness, my projects all crashing and burning, dad in hospital, familial relations).

What it feels like is... well, I said bereavement... yes, like about a month after mum died, the week after Jabi died. But it could also be the loss of a love affair. The end of a big project that had engaged me intensely. It is loss.

At the gym, trying to lift a stupid kettle bell, I just stopped and wanted to cry. Feeding the crows I wanted to cry at White Wing's timidity. Writing emails, I want to cry at the futility. Checking social media, I want to cry at the lack of responses. Listening to the birds I want to cry at the vulnerability of little living things. Looking at my feet when I sat on the ground at the gym, I felt a kind of oddness... that I felt sorry for these feet and this body that had to endure this mind all the time.

The world is all out of kilter and is not my home. I am like a a ship's passenger who can't adjust to the tilt of the vessel.

And the emotion is so wearying. So desperately sad. So alone.

I said to Ali in the gym, "Maybe I need to migrate at these times?"

There is something deeply physiological about it. It is not thought-stuff. It is heart-stuff, senses-stuff, feeling-stuff.

But only thought-stuff ever seems to count.