Early winter words

I’m working solely with weekend creativity at the moment, as my cold proves difficult to shake and I complete my workplace tasks in a slightly zombified fashion.  Or not: I came home sick on Thursday and spent most of yesterday in bed.  I dislike minor illness with a passion.  It fails in its role as memento mori, since it places one in the class of walking wounded only, but at the same time it incapacitates the body enough for the mind to get on to some really first-class worrying.  Thus my catarrh and neuroses feed each other and Arthur gets woken in the middle of the night as I run my hands along his sides to make sure, for no reason, that he’s still breathing.  From the same location, the señor orders me not to sleep on my back, so he isn’t woken by my cold-related sleep apnœa, wondering, should I wake her and tell her to breathe, or not?

From my congested head I view the winter weather with grim displeasure, primarily for the way in which it separates me from my recent memories of Japan in the springtime.  How is it that five weeks ago I strolled blithely around temple pathways heavy with cherry blossom and now I wonder how long it will be before I slip over on frozen dead leaves on the walk from my car to my office?  The fact that I understand perfectly well the literal “how” of this doesn’t seem to make it metaphorical truthiness any more palatable.  It’s winter, in a deciduous city, and I have a cold and work to do.  I note @che_tibby’s recent frustration with desultory leaf-blowing and see something similar around the inner-suburbs and inner-city environs here.  The omnipresence of slippery, dead, wet leaves seems indicative of my self-indulgently gloomy mood at the moment.

Of greatest frustration to me this week has been the way in which my cold has interfered with my ability to do my volunteer duties around campus with all cylinders a-firing.  This is coming up, and I want to make sure all administrative ends are tied and the members’ representative who is managing most of the heavy lifting is appropriately supported.  While I try not to record directly the details of my work here, this is an occasion about which I am well excited.  I need to think hard about what my welcoming words will be (before, in accordance with the kaupapa, I make my gracious exit; I will have to continue to rely on this [see "Moana Jackson"] for a taste of what the participants will hear).  One of the things I love about union life (pace @sas73 who responded to Lisa’s unicorn/union confusion with this) is the way in which addressing employees’ workplace aspirations can give rise to wider cultural, social and political link-building and strengthening.  I didn’t expect to have the opportunity to help organise something on this scale this early in my voluntary role.

Soon enough, too, I must say goodbye to my Yokohama exchange students (seen below in the fetchingly autumnal Ashburton Public Gardens), who finish their academic programme.  I am not the only blogger to have had Japan on my mind of late, with annettle taking some language classes and Kay of made for weather preparing to visit her son and grandchild later this year.  Kay’s poem “Japanese Evening Class” evokes, satisfyingly “language’s twisted skein”.  At times I feel these twists at work in my native language, too, as the above paragraphs likely suggest.

If you’ve read this far, you deserve some solicitative participation.  Let me poll you, accordingly.

[poll id="2"]

The final poll option is brought to you by the dogs, who will also accept pat-pats in lieu of spring.

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* “it’s time to go home when you misread ‘consultation with the unions’ as ‘consultation with the unicorns’… and i was all ‘charlie? have you been outside today?’ and he looked at me all ‘… ‘…’” (via Facebook) [back to paragraph]

*“they are kind of the same – fantastical and a bit pointless (via Twitter) [back to paragraph]

Tagged as: autumn, spring, winter, work