mehrunnnisa
january ended brightly with sunshine, mostly in character as it has been largely sunny. winter sunshine is rarely warm but has a way of illuminating the deepest recesses of space. nothing escapes it. it is sharp, more white than soft toned and streams intently, spilling crisp shadows everywhere. it seems as if nature has been kind with its gift of light this year. or perhaps it feels this way because i am still working from home, rather than in an office with artificial lights and no windows to observe the transitions of light from day to night.
it is hard to believe that the first month of this year is consigned to the past. last year feels like it was so long ago but the new year seems like yesterday. my thoughts keep returning to time, or more specifically its binaries - chronological and ruptured, structured and unstructured, fast and slow. the ancient greeks had two words for time; chronos which denotes quantitative, linear time and kairos which is its opposite. kairos is not just time free of structure and sequence. it is time measured by risk and opportunity. it is the lived experience of time, replete with negotiations and the adjustments in a way that is new to us. i read an essay on pandemic time in that first summer of and with covid. it was the period in which lockdowns were starting waning, but little was known about what was to come. rao wrote about the beginning and ending of plague time. he sees the relationship between its arrival and departure as a dance which he named the ‘virus quadrille’. the dance is the first chapter of the future, traversing the past that many will hope for and want to return to and others perceive as a dream no longer in reach. between the two ends is what i call the messy middle, the place inhabited by unknowns. where tomorrow is still a half formed thing, being lived through with mental gymnastics, calculations of risk and mediations. i wish that the messy middle could be skipped for a tomorrow where conclusions have been arrived at and practised so that they become permanent(ish). i wish this while knowing its impossibility because if there is one certainty, it is that the only way is through. as symborska says, life is ‘performance without rehearsal’. the messy middle is full of questions about futures that lie in wait, about who and what will shape them.
the end of january coincided with marching orders to return to office. yet another attempt to return to old ways of working with some new ones emerging (for instance hybrid, flexible and the four day working week) . it is a neat illustration of the messy middle. the past and future jostle against each other. some see the return to office as a reassurance. for others, it is an exercise of trying to fit the future to the past. physically, the office is dated. everything has aged and not well. the computer screens appear old and smaller than the ones in our home offices. the desktop computers are sluggish from a combination of lack of use and needing to be updated. working from home did not happen for everyone, but for those who did there is the question about what the office is for. what should work look like? and how and where should it be done?
things i want to remember of january: becoming an aunt; the crystal clarity of winter sunlight; the loud and sweet sound of robins; friday lunchtime walks with ilaria; local shops as lifelines, my favourites include fink’s sweet and salt, top cuvee, the book bar, ink at 84 and seasons and blossoms; white mausu’s condiments that amplify flavour with little effort; the effort and reward of homemade marmalade; house plants thriving; juicy conversation with margot when she came to stay; dinner at the plimsoll with v where we had scrumptious burgers, chubby little fried potatoes with aioli, a soft wedge of ricotta cheese cake baked in the manner of the wildly popular basque cheesecake and served with barbie pink rhubarb and a thick chocolate mousse finished with a peppery olive oil and flaky salt.
postscript: i am resolutely avoiding mentioning the news. this does not mean i am not listening to it. just that there have to be some spaces that are free of it.
Jenny
The longest month is over already. I feel as though 2021 ended about a decade ago, but there’s no sign of me getting into the swing of 2022. The time lag has made me slow to react to what is happening out in the world. The news passes me by in a blur, as though I’m watching it from a train, but then I register it and feel the full force of the recoil. All that pain, and anger, and exhaustion.
What is there to be said or done about any of it? Everything seems grimly inevitable and shocking at the same time. Our lives are still restricted, but we seem to be living in an increasingly lawless land. So many people are having to face so much, head on, with no escape, and dig so deep just to survive, while others – in the privileged position of actually being able to say and do things – have merrily kept on being concerned only with the surfaces of things and denied us even the comforting illusion that beyond the chaotic lurch from one day to the next there is some semblance of order and regularity.
I can’t process the pandemic into any sort of order, but I fall into the usual pattern of trying to make sense of the present and predict the future by reference to the past, all the time knowing that anything that feels like wisdom will definitely turn out to be a false memory. Yesterday, I went to a concert (I know – exciting). It was a sort of a recital (here I go already) by Craig Taborn, and it was like nothing I had ever heard, or seen, really. I’ve watched people play the piano before, but not like that. And yet, to begin with, I kept thinking, “Oh. Is this a bit like Debussy? Or Ravel? Or Thelonius Monk?” as though I’d recognise any of those if I tripped up over them while running.
It was like the time I tasted some white wine or other and declared that it tasted like gooseberries, before realising that, as far as I could recall, I had never tasted gooseberries. What I had remembered was Jilly Goolden saying that on Food and Drink in the 1980s. Anyway, I went on. Are these “movements”? Is this a “symphony” except that all the instruments are piano? That GCSE in music was a long time ago, and it’s a shame how little of it I’ve retained, or built on, despite all the opportunities and experiences I’ve had.
In time, though, the performance started to make sense to me, or I started to make sense of it for myself, without imposing on it half-remembered or misremembered trivia. It was like one of those old magic eye pictures, or the first series of The Wire, when I couldn’t understand the dialogue at all, and then, suddenly, I could — even when Craig Taborn leaned forward and reached deep into the piano to play its strings as well as its keys.
A gale was blowing in St Anne’s Square that day as it got dark, and, underneath the miraculous harmonics that Craig Taborn seemed to produce more with the pedals than the keys, I could hear the sound of the wind skirling around the cathedral. But when the performance was over, the silence was true. There was wonder in the applause, warmly and modestly received, and the only time it felt like then was now.