My Preferred Pronoun is 'Khaleesi'

I have figured it out.  The rage.  It wasn’t just fatigue from being ill, it’s not just mental malaise from the doom-news.  It’s not the post-shingles itch that drove me mad for weeks.  It’s that I have been feeling powerless.  Like that moment on ‘Sex and the City’; “He’s just not that into you”.  The relief, that that’s all it is.

This may well be a stage of retirement, of aging.   Both are deeper processes than I anticipated.  Actually, that’s not true.  What’s true is, I never anticipated them.  I thought, have the occasional paddle along the beach of a morning, in the afternoon - feet up, binge-watch ‘Gilmore Girls’, read books, eat chocolate and have breakfast in bed every Monday morning, because ha ha.  More thought should have been given, especially on those ‘what’s the point, death is next’ type of thoughts.  Let’s call it ‘catastrophising’.  Maybe I always did that.  Maybe I needed to take a news break about twenty years ago, and then not restart reading the news ever again.  Maybe I just need to get back to long walks in the fresh air again.  Get a routine.  Read Pulitzer prize-winners, not headlines.

Maybe I’m just dehydrated.

I read a fantastic book by a Pulitzer short-lister, ‘North Woods’ by Daniel Mason.  The last chapter helped me realise, there is no escape, powerless or powerful, from what is going on in the world. 

May as well cheer up.

The supermoon was pink and super, the wheatfields are golden-pink.  The geese are on the move south, stopping for goosy snacks in the freshly shorn fields, fertilising them with their poop.  Which means that the tundra mosses the geese eat on Svalbard each summer become the nutrients in the bread we eat each winter. 

We are Svalbard.

Carbs are fabulous.

Images for this journal have been posted on Insta @purplehaze_journals

Credit: ‘Game of Thrones’ 2011 HBO DVD Series 1-9.  Created/Prod. David Benioff, D. B. Weiss, George R.R. Martin.

Credit: ‘North Woods’, Daniel Mason 2023. Random House.

Credit: "Sex and the City" Pick-a-Little, Talk-a-Little (TV Series 6 Episode 4 2003) HBO.