“You are the sky. Everything else – it’s just the weather.”
― Pema Chödrön
So much weather. Speaking of which, happy solstice. This is when things start getting better, right? Or is this the beginning of the end?
I read too many end-times novels this year (more on that next week) and can’t help but wonder if this really is the decline of humanity. This week has not helped that point of view. Trying to keep pretending I have a full-time job as we round the crest to Year 3 of COVID is turning into a cruel joke.
Yesterday, at pickup, a mom I am friendly with sidled up to my car to commiserate with me about how these times are — and I quote, but agreeably — “fucking moms.” When I woke up at 5:30 consumed by anxiety, only to notice I had missed a call from the school district that we have a two-hour weather delay, I couldn’t help but laugh. I had almost forgotten about weather delays, what with all the missing school because of everything from a mild cold symptom to an actual COVID exposure!
While I was making coffee at 6am (who am I?), alone in a quiet old house, I noticed that the snap pea plant one of my daughters started from seed at school a few months ago has not one but FOUR peas growing on it. It’s December, so there is not enough light for this kind of optimism, and the plant is leaning hard on the chilly glass pane of our south-facing kitchen window.
I started thinking about the teensy tiny salad I am going to make: I’ll find the smallest baby spinach leaves, a few pomegranate seeds, some tiny carrot medallions. It’s the little things, and sometimes quite literally.
I wonder if the people in Pompeii ate pomegranates. I read a fascinating article about Pompeii in the New Yorker last night (it’s here if you would like to read about an ancient calamity as an escape from our modern calamity). Aside from maybe Machu Picchu, Pompeii is probably the most interesting place I’ve ever been, and I was surprised to learn that there are still areas of the buried city that haven’t yet been excavated. In fact, archeologists through the centuries have formed a tacit agreement not to over-excavate, since the presumption is that archeological techniques will get better and better. They’re saving some of the ruins for improved future science.
Recently, though, they unearthed a thermopolium, which was basically an ancient snack bar for the hoi polloi, who in those days were not guaranteed a kitchen in their house.
in 2019, archeologists realized that they had come upon a structure worthy of a full excavation: a thermopolium, or snack bar, which was situated just across the street from the House of the Silver Wedding, as if the Frick mansion were cheek by jowl with a Gray’s Papaya.
I picture the good people of Pompeii sidled up to the thermopolium on the Vicolo delle Nozze d’Argento idly chewing a pomegranate seed while gazing idly off into the distance, when suddenly something unusual catches the eye. A rumbling, a cloud of gases. Something is not quite right. Then, holy shit, is that…….? RUN!!
My nervous system these days feels poised for a hydrothermal eruption, metaphorically speaking. Meanwhile, so far, the earth keeps revolving around the sun. Solstice marks our return to the light. Right?
