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Am slowly taking up the reins of normal life again after my holiday. I was pretty busy most of the time - I never seemed to find the time (or the place) just to chill out in a cafe with a book; there was just so much to see. Having downloaded by photos I find there are over 1100 - I had to decrease the photo size as I was running out of memory. I'd really have thought that a memory card that sufficed for 3 months in France and then 3 months in Iona would have done for a two week holiday, but Tuscany is just too darned photogenic!
After all the anticipation and planning, I managed to spend most of the trip enjoying the 'now', only occasionally wondering at the feeling of me being there and fearing the future when it would only be memory. But my first day back was golden - I woke up not quite sure where I was, my mind still half in Volterra. Part of a holiday is, I suppose, integrating the experience into ones life afterwards, and just a week canoeing the Yukon a few years ago left me the steady rhythm of watching the water swirl round a canoe paddle again and again and again, there is now a sunny place in my soul filled with hills and church bells and bright light and red-roofed hilltowns. (And yes, that's an idealised view omitting sticky heat and weird plumbing and chewing gum on the back of bus seats, but my heart needs to drink in the good things.)
Unfortunately it only took a day and a half of office politics for me to feel crap, but I've a library shift this afternoon and they tend to be a little more life-affirming!
Am feeling rather lonely at the moment; it's been almost two years since I've been here and though I've met some lovely people I don't have a friend, someone who wants to spend time with me and whom the thought of seeing and sharing time with lifts my heart. There are a few people who could be on the cusp of that but I seem to have lost the knack - or the confidence that someone would respond positively if I ask them for coffee, or that I could throw a party a bunch of disconnected people might enjoy.
But I love Autumn - it was very strange at the start of September feeling my soul reach out to embrace the wild weather and the promise of dark evenings filled with anticipation of Halloween, Bonfire night, Christmas, while knowing I had to put that on hold until after going 'back' to summer. But now I'm faced with two messy rooms to make sense of and three too-full weeks to prepare for Hallowe'en...
After all the anticipation and planning, I managed to spend most of the trip enjoying the 'now', only occasionally wondering at the feeling of me being there and fearing the future when it would only be memory. But my first day back was golden - I woke up not quite sure where I was, my mind still half in Volterra. Part of a holiday is, I suppose, integrating the experience into ones life afterwards, and just a week canoeing the Yukon a few years ago left me the steady rhythm of watching the water swirl round a canoe paddle again and again and again, there is now a sunny place in my soul filled with hills and church bells and bright light and red-roofed hilltowns. (And yes, that's an idealised view omitting sticky heat and weird plumbing and chewing gum on the back of bus seats, but my heart needs to drink in the good things.)
Unfortunately it only took a day and a half of office politics for me to feel crap, but I've a library shift this afternoon and they tend to be a little more life-affirming!
Am feeling rather lonely at the moment; it's been almost two years since I've been here and though I've met some lovely people I don't have a friend, someone who wants to spend time with me and whom the thought of seeing and sharing time with lifts my heart. There are a few people who could be on the cusp of that but I seem to have lost the knack - or the confidence that someone would respond positively if I ask them for coffee, or that I could throw a party a bunch of disconnected people might enjoy.
But I love Autumn - it was very strange at the start of September feeling my soul reach out to embrace the wild weather and the promise of dark evenings filled with anticipation of Halloween, Bonfire night, Christmas, while knowing I had to put that on hold until after going 'back' to summer. But now I'm faced with two messy rooms to make sense of and three too-full weeks to prepare for Hallowe'en...
