Stuck in the Middle... (Ladies of Hive #256)

Well, technically, I don't live in the middle. But I like the question more as I interpreted it.

If you live in the middle, then what is the one thing you are looking forward to in this season?

It's uneasy, living (or trying to live) in the middle right about now. It's weighted and ugly and expensive and wrong. Sometimes, it feels like holding space for the darkness and pettiness that both sides are intrinsically capable of. If there's one thing that becomes abundantly clear, the more you strive to live in the middle, it's how much more convenient (and at times necessary) it is, picking a side. You can't sit on the fence forever. You're either in or you're out. Except I find myself leaving things on the other side, regardless of what that side is, and being tempted to go back for them. Left people. In the end, no matter how hard, it needs to be the people.

But that's enough sentimentality for now. If I could look forward to some things, as a middle-dweller, it would be...

... that more people find their way to the middle. Selfish, I know. Cocky. Thinking this is the best way. But when you see how much terror both sides are capable of wreaking, you're hard-pressed for alternatives.

... that we stop before everyone ends up blind and maimed.

... that the heaviness and atrocity that greets us at every corner would push us closer to one shared humanity already, rather than have us screaming more boisterously at the "other side".

I've said often, and especially during the pandemic, that there are indeed sides, except they're not the ones we think. It's not us versus them (as Roger Waters so brilliantly points out, it's us and them), or if it is, the "us" is far bigger than we realize. There's clearly evil and malevolence on this earth. That's the "them". Your neighbors, your lovers, your friends, that's still "us".

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I'm sorry, I couldn't help myself. I hope the kindly community of ladies on Hive will tolerate this small ramble, and allow me to circle back to the question at hand.

If you live in the Northern Hemisphere, what is the one thing you are looking forward to in the fall season?

I love fall. Sensing the shift in atmosphere, the cooling of nights, the death hanging on the air is, just for once, beautiful rather than terrible. These mornings, I woke up quite early to attend a festival with my yoga workshop, and got the chance to walk along the Dambovita river here, in Bucharest.

I was dressed, still, for summer, except it's no longer summer.

I was basking, sweating in the arduous heat of sun, but it's no longer a heatwave.

When light becomes scarce, heat becomes a privilege. And for all my summertime complaints, I found myself reveling in the sudden brush of heat against my cheeks, knowing well it would not last forever. That this is one of a handful of weekend mornings when life will feel like this.

It's odd how we need the change of season to appreciate the previous. And much as I do, I look forward, in equal measure, to the cold. The covering my feet at night. The grabbing a jacket before I set out for the day. The dying of leaves and nature's self-imposed confinement. To socked feet, and keeping my hands in my pockets.

For me, who am learning to love and accept the fall, autumn is a season of grief, but also unexpected tenderness. It's finding comfort in the quietness of turned off lights and wooly feet that I look forward to in this season. The reprieve that is staying in, coupled with the habitualistic last hoorah of sunny days, growing more ephemeral and scarce.

Fall knows to forgive me in ways summer never can. For shutting myself in too much. For forgetting to call, and neglecting reaching out to friends who've reached out to me. For needing, still, unforgivably, so much space to grow myself into a full-formed thing. Perhaps. Eventually. Someday.

Paradoxically, fall is a season of coming back to life after the arid wasteland and summer drought. (Perhaps eventually, I will learn that drought is not draught, and perhaps my aha moment will come in the cold, like so many things.) I watch blossom about me a cluster of arts and spaces for growth and discovery. For dance and theatre, for newness now that we've all come home.

In some ways, while long past schooling, fall remains a season of saying "we've gone away, but we're all here again now. Welcome. Hello."

I suspect there are worse things to look forward to than this.

P.S. If the question has aroused your interest, feel free to contribute your own response to this week's Ladies of Hive challenge. Find the link above or in the community. Cheers.