Endless Summer

As I write this the calendar says it’s September 13th, but I’m finding that really hard to believe. My life for the last 3 months has been stuck in a sort of permanent July, and there’s no end in sight. Labour Day came and went and the only reason it meant anything at all to me is because I could Skype with Karen and Steve earlier in the day because they weren’t at work.* It’s strange.

Fall is my favourite time of year. The days are still warm, but there’s a crispness to the air in the morning and the trees all turn colours and you get to dig up a favourite sweater again and start thinking about cooking things that need to bubble in a pot on the back of the stove for hours. And because I’ve spent my life either in school or in a kind of job that works in seasons, every September since I was about four years old has come with that exciting fresh start feeling you get with a new year of school or a new season of shows. I’ve often thought that we should celebrate New Year’s in the fall, though eliminating any holiday from the cold, dark days of January would be extravagantly cruel.**

At this time last year I was hard at work – we were building the first show of the year, and were about to start rehearsing it too (And if that’s not a “first day of school” feeling, then I don’t know what is. The first day of rehearsal for the first show of the season? Grand.) I’ve had a look back through my agenda from September 2008 and it’s all full of meetings with designers and consultations with outside trainers and staff photos and stuff like that. And I ran a 14km trail race on the 13th and a half marathon on the 14th. And I had my teeth cleaned, and my eyes checked. That was my totally normal life one year ago. Today I’m in a cheap (but nice) hotel in a small city in France, with one bag of belongings and no responsibilities and not much of a plan other than “Barcelona some time next week, and Portugal after that.” It’s funny how the wind blows sometimes.

I’m not complaining. Well, not seriously anyways. I admit that when I think about it, I think how nice it would be to have a walk in the old neighbourhood, shuffling through dry leaves and thinking about what to make for supper and zipping up my jacket because it’s a bit chillier than I expected. Instead, I think I’ll wander down and have all-you-can-eat mussels and frites and possibly contemplate a glass of wine or two.

Like I said, I’m not complaining.

* The fact that, regardless of their holiday schedule, I didn’t end up Skyping them until about 12:30am Paris time is beside the point. As is the fact that part of the reason I was late is that once again I ended up walking for about 10 minutes in exactly the wrong direction after deciding to get off the metro one stop early and walk a bit further rather than changing lines. This time I blame my $3.00 compass, because I knew I was supposed to be going west, and I’m sure that’s what the compass said, so I just kept striding confidently down the dark street next to the elevated metro tracks, past an uncomfortable number of the kind of coffee shops and bars that come equipped with a permanent collection of shady characters who hang about at small tables outside the place, smoking cigarettes and giving off a vaguely menacing aura. By the time I reached the metro stop before the one where I’d got off, I really didn’t fancy walking back past all that again, so I just got on the damned train again, and changed to the other line like I should have done in the first place, and took the new line that single stop, and it was all fine, except that my time-saving shortcut ended up taking about an extra 45 minutes, and Karen kept texting me saying “Skype??”

**God, could you imagine the bleakness of going all the way from Boxing Day to Easter without a break? People would be stabbing themselves with icicles.