Another day full of humid heat, little mishaps and uneasy feeling that something is not right. Maybe just atmospheric pressure. Maybe just hormones. Maybe just a lack of adrenaline. Maybe something deeper.

I saw a first fully golden tree. It was beautiful and scary, like a botched time travel experiment.

I finished Tmmy Orange’s There, There and cried. I started listening to Gabor Mate’s The Myth of Normal. Also started reading Alice Elliot’s And Then She Fell. Are three books in one day enough?

Then, in the midst of this unease and ill timings, I managed to carve out fourty minutes for a walk around the village lake. It was waiting for me there – a perfect sunset. Not just any sunset – the very last minutes before the sun hides behind the one-storey skyline of my placid suburb. Silhouettes of trees and clouds reflected in the dark water. Perfectly circular ripples running across these silhouettes. Someone, small fish or frogs or maybe turtles, popping on the surface and re-disappearing. A fat dragonfly flying along the shore. I sat down and took off my sandals, so it feels more like a meditation. I want to learn to meditate. I had a thought, what if I do it wrong, that I chased away. I don’t know if one could meditate wrongly, but there is no wrong way to watch a sunset.

The trouble with me and meditation is that I come from evangelical culture that tends to be very performative. There is always you and the Other whom you try to impress. And you keep trying and trying, harder and harder, never entirely sure of the effect. Being an Orthodox (or a Catholic, I suppose) is so much easier. You just show up and someone absolves you – there is a sure way, a ritual, something older and bigger, something someone else does for you. Compared to this, being evangelical is hard work, an almost megalomaniac pursuit. Even now I have to remind myself not to try so hard – no one is watching, no one is comparing, no one is giving out gold stars either. Just sit down and watch the sunset. Oh, and the liberating thought that all of this: the sunset, the ripples across the water, the perfect harmony are not there for me, were not created for me – I just happen to be passing by. I am not the centre of the universe – the centre of the universe is everywhere.

My daughter told me this morning that she wants to spend her whole life in Canada. Why, I asked. Because she feels good here and wants to live where she knows everything and feels good and to be close to me. And if I move, I asked. I’ll consider it, she said carefully, although I would still love to be in Canada. Will you move, she then asked. I honestly replied that I don’t know. I saw that my daughter has something I never had when I was little, something I never had period – the assurance that everything she needs, everything that makes her whole and happy is already there where she lives. I don’t know what it’s like. I always wanted to be somewhere else, I guess I still do. I never felt whole or completely at home. And yet, I often feel that I miss home. The thing is, when I miss home I don’t know who or where I miss.

But bless her. She is growing into someone vastly different from me. With a different feeling of attachment and possibility. Somewhere deep inside her, I believe there are still the shadows of our forgotten ancestors and the echoes of songs I never sang to her in the language she doesn’t speak. Bless her.

The summer is now sadly in its melting away stage, as evidenced by the dusk that falls shortly after eight pm.

This week feels heavy and slow. I attribute this in part to the weather, the mix of humid heat and heavy storms, in part to the menstrual hormons and in part to the fact that I am still figuring it all out.

In the morning, first my daughter’s bike broke, then the rain flooded the car, because I left the roof open, then the camp called saying E needed new shoes because her regular ones were hurting. And to add to the distractions and frustrations of the day, I lost the document i’d been working on due to the Word malfunction and learned that a colleague got fired.

Yet, with all the heaviness and unease, there were surprising moments of bliss: a lunchtime walk under a light summer sprinkle, a generous cup of a blue milky drink that the cafe called matcha mango. When I asked for it, big, iced, the barista confessed that they were out of matcha, but the blue powder was just as good, just a little more lavandy. I said why not and ended up with a beautiful blue cup of something that tasted neither mango, not matcha, something that reminded me of a milk cocktail, but sophisticated enough for an adult to drink. And as I was walking away with my blue milky drink, I saw Richard Wagamese’s Embers in a book exchange box that almost never contains anything interesting. Then I noticed the first time of Philip Pullman’ships Dark Materials

In the evening, my daughter gave me a goldfinch feather.

Life doesn’t have to be perfect in order to be beautiful. Really.

If bikes were the last year’s best purchase, this year it’s swimming goggles. 25 dollars in Decathlon. A medium-price item. A commitment to finally find time to go swimming regularly. More than that, a gesture towards a desired future. They are really nice goggles too. They don’t fog and stay well in place and thanks to them I can keep my eyes open in water: see that impossible blue, air bubbles in front of my face and a long black line. All of that together is embodiment of pure bliss.

I went for adult swim hour at the pool – the only time one can actually swim there (though some try during the family hours too, unsuccessfully). Since it was my first time, I didn’t know what to expect. Will there be many people? No one? It turned out, we were just enough. Not too many, but still numerous enough to have to share swimming lanes. I found something surprising – turned out I didn’t mind sharing the pool after all. I’ve grown fond of the communities of strangers: people who may have nothing in common except for their love of some shared activity or interest. I love how we share space with each other, the recognition without doing too much. I see you, I salute you, then we proceed in peace. We respect each other’s solitude. Turns out, I like swimming in the company of strangers. Alone but together.

I was unwell this week. It wasn’t a feeling I could easily describe or make sense of, just a general feeling of being ill at ease, inattentive, a desire to flee from my body and mental exhaustion. As for the reasons, it could be “just” hormones, or something deeper. As for the symptoms, it manifested itself, as usual, with obsessive scrolling, inability to concentrate on simplest tasks, exhaustion and obsessive feelings about separation. Inability to feel pleasure even from the things that usually give me pleasure: music, birds, walking, books.

During last therapy session, Maya said that space is my medicine. I’m thinking about it, not obsessively, but often enough. Even if she hadn’t said it, even if I hadn’t been thinking about it, spending Friday morning in the forest would have always been my first choice. Blessed be the one who invented summer time and arranged the planets so I can take my Fridays off in the summer. This was the best medicine. The space, the soft damp earth, the light bouncing off green leaves, the songs of red-eyed vireos and eastern wood-peewees, the proximity of the water, the smell of the lake that reminded me one particular childhood memory: me and mama vacationing near Kozynka. Was it with tyotya Sveta or tyotya Valya, or maybe with each one of them on a separate occasion? They have both passed and I hope that their spirits are in peace.

I stopped by the Birch lake for a quick rest. I wish I could call it a meditation, but this would be pretentious. I sat cross-legged on the warm wood of a small pier. I looked at the water and its constant shimmering and wrinkling of the surface. I tried not to interpret, ask questions or draw conclusions. Just look at the water. The I looked at the little water gliders, elegant. The I looked at the small fishes just beneath the surface. Then I closed my eyes and focused on my breathing. When I opened them again, I didn’t feel tired anymore. I felt lightness and clarity that remained with me for the rest of the day. I felt good I still feel good. Whole and rested.

The forecast promised thunderstorm, hail and a possibility of tornado, so we cancelled evening activities and honestly, it was a blessing. The thunderstorm did come, but much later in the evening. Before, there was a warm sticky evening with rain that started, stopped and started again. I like walking in this uncertain weather. If you time it right, you can walk almost to the forest and back through the neighbourhood in an almost perfect solitude. Tonight my solitude was rewarded by spotting a red cardinal and a goldfinch.

Today, I went to therapy, saw an owl and a sunset. It was such a beautiful day.

I wonder if there is a word in any language that describes the longing that humans feel around sunset. I say humans and not just me, because a longing so deep and intense cannot possibly be individual experience. I say humans because I have seen it and recognised it in multiple spaces and on multiple locations. Longing so deep, it almost feels like remembering. Longing so intense it feels like magic. Many years ago someone asked me what is magic. I wrote a long article on it, but didn’t answer the question. Now I have the answer. Magic is remembering what it is to be human in all our glory and fragility.

We are past summer solstice, which means the days are imperceptibly getting shorter. For me, summer is always a time of heartache. (I recently had a reflection that I usually experience joy as heartache. Good things make me cry.) I fear summer’s swiftness, its impermanence. The peonies are gone, the pink echinaceas and yellow heliopsis are showing their faces. Adding to this heartache are the songbirds. Today, a robin sitting on the neighbours chimney serenaded me (not me), as I was sitting on the porch, trying to wrap my head around all the things I have to pack. On my evening walk, I saw a turtle come up for air, I saw a kingfisher dove for some small fish, I saw black dragonflies and an orange butterfly. The more time I spend getting to know this place, the less I feel like I want to be somewhere else.

Let me try something…

I am writing this standing, leaning onto a warm wall of pink-painted brick on the corner between Prince-Arthur and Jeanne-Mance streets in Tiohtià:ke, at 6:15pm on the longest day of this year. It is summer solstice, it is the third day of a rare June heatwave and it is still hot, but the air is becoming a little more breathable. Just now there is a gentle breeze. The city is noisy and full of tourists, but also strangely leisurely, its French soul protecting it from succumbing to capitalist frenzy. I feel well, slow, tired, generous and I am writing this because one, I have time and two, I want to see how it feels to write from a place of presence (not emotion, imagination or memory). It feels ok.

All things considered, it wasn’t a bad day, maybe even a good one. I feel lost, tired and bereft, but there are many reasonable reasons why one may feel so. For one, I am not dealing well with heat. I don’t like the city in the summer. I have not slept well. I am three days short of my vacation and the fatigue of these six months is becoming unbearable. In addition, there were other, totally avoidable reasons, like spending too much time on LinkedIn.

An interesting thought: when I am low on adrenaline, serotonin and oxytocin, I don’t feel myself. I define myself by hight sensitivity, emotivity, intelligence and antagonism and have a hard time accepting a calmer, more sedate version of myself. I wonder why this may be.