hot wind

And so, after about five days straight of 40 C-ish weather, it is still officially too hot to sit on the balcony in the evenings, without rivulets of sweat dripping off one’s being, so we are sitting inside downstairs, without the aircon going (tho the portable’s going upstairs for the cats). It's also too hot too work in my study, so I've been parked pretty much at the dining room table over the last week.  My lips are so permanently dried and chapped, it’s become a state of being, along with a kind of blistex reflex. My Anangu calendar describes it as uterne mpepe or middle summer: 

Hot wind begins to blow from the northwest, we call that the bad wind, making people tired and irritable.  It may bring rain clouds, thunder and lightning.

Otherwise, I have decided I don’t mind this time of year.  One of the good things about the extreme heat is that it gives you an excuse to withdraw inside and contemplate.  Added to this is the relative lack of people in town, quietness on the workfront and the sense that the year hasn’t booted up yet.  It seems fitting to have this regular cycle, the feeling of the sloughing off the old, especially after the craziness and busyness of the previous season.  I wonder how we would fare psychologically without some regular sense of beginning, middle and end to each year.

I feel the new year doesn’t really start until around Australia Day/Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf Day, as people go back to work and kids to school.  There’s still a sense of reprieve, of hopeful foreboding about what the new year might bring: as in, please let it be better than 2009.  Most people I know seem united in having found the year of the ox or the water buffalo or whatever it was to be hard-going. 

Apart from being extremely turgid work and otherwise for me, it was the year of the crazy random encounter (you mean, the crazy drunken encounter - Ed).  Although this made for some entertaining dinner party stories later, to be honest, it’s not really my style, and the troughs could have been leavened by some more reliable plateaus and less erratic peaks.  So, I’m hoping for less craziness, less turgidity in 2010 (a rather well-rounded and even-looking number, after all).

But there’s bad news for some of us, acc to Mystic Medusa, if you want to go with Chinese astrology.  Apparently the Year of the Tigger is about to start soon, in keeping with my theory that the year doesn’t really begin until Feb:

If you are born in the year of the Monkey, Tiger or Snake or have them anywhere in your Four Pillars chart it is best to wear a pig pendant for the whole of 2010 as it will help to harmonise any challenges you may experience, as you may find 2010 more challenging than previous years. 

Jeepers, how does she come up with this stuff?  I love MM as the Thinking Woman’s Astrologer, but sometimes…(I mean, moi wearing a pig pendant?)

And new year's resolution: no more shoes.  I think I have enough of them.  I could go another pair of office trousers or a warm jumper for winter, but shoes I don't need.

Suddenly there’s wind tossing the tree-tops outside.  How appropriate, after several days of heat and stillness, and more to the point, consulting the Anangu calendar.  Hopefully, there’ll be thunder and rain soon as well.  Oh, now there's lightning, so time to stop blogging before I get electrocuted.  

Comments

[Mary]

Instead of a pig pendant, you could get a pig tattoo. Heck, I could get a pig tattoo, but I was born in the year of the pig, so maybe I don't need it? Anyway, i'm always talking about getting tattoos that I have no intention of getting. Then I do get tattoos kindof at random... or rather I got 2 of them at random. It's not like this is a regular occurance.

Also, it is brilliant and inspiring to me to think that for some people, the start of a new year is denoted by wickedly hot weather rather than this half-and-half bitter cold and dreary soggy weather we've been having.

[elsewhere]

Likewise, I can't imagine what it's like to go thru a cold wet time at the end of the year, tho I did go to NY for Susannah's residency this time two years ago. i do wonder whether it inspires the same degree of withdrawal and contemplation, tho I think your holiday season is maybe shorter than ours.

I have the whole tattoo thing bad, in that I angst over whether I should get one for ages, but I never do. Same thing about the spelling of my name. But there won't be a pig tattoo, that's for sure. I'm a snake, anyway...

[Laura]

hmmm, I'd wear the pig pendant if I were you. Why take unnecessary risks?

[elsewhere]

Laura, your wedding was of course one of the high-points of 2009!