Musings on the elements
I find something deeply satisfying about winter here in Perth, from the bright, endless, infinite blue of a clear, cloudless day through to wild and windy stormy days, to the uniformly grey skies when it's a solid overcast, and all the endless variations in between.
Summer is never this interesting, or pleasing, to me. In fact, I find it highly oppressive in many ways. Perhaps because summer is, for the most part, a dead time in our year, when it is mostly either too hot, too dry or both for months at a time. Summer always feels oppressive to me, with the heat, the light, and most of all, the fundamentally static weather. For the vast majority of summer here in Western Australia, the days are the same, hot, clear and mostly still. I find this oppressive on some deep emotional/spiritual level, and spend most of summer spending as much of the days as possible in places as cool and dark as I can get away with, longing for the return of the winds, the 'cold' and the rain.
For example, this summer, 07/08, we had 50 contiguous days with no precipitation here in Perth, and when it finally broke with a cold front and 12-18 hours of rain, I lay in bed for hours listening to it and dozing contentedly, and eventually got up only to spend 3/4 of an hour wandering around the back yard in my shorts, just feeling the rain on my skin.
Even now, in the middle of winter, I find the wind, rain and much cooler weather satisfying on some deep, non-verbal level.
I've always thought of myself as a Water person, despite The Housemate's bizarre insistence that I'm Earth, but lately I've been pondering if there isn't more Air in my nature than I'd realised. I'm very strongly a Cat person, pet-wise, but I get the same sort of satisfaction/uplift from seeing/observing many birds. One of the little accents to my days are on the way to work, how many water-chickens and ducks I see at a particular pond on the bus route, and for how long, can make a small but noticeable difference to my mood and day. Magpie larks, Magpies, Wattlebirds, Ravens, Honeyeaters and Willie Wagtails all have very similar, though distinct, effects.
'Tis passing strange....
Summer is never this interesting, or pleasing, to me. In fact, I find it highly oppressive in many ways. Perhaps because summer is, for the most part, a dead time in our year, when it is mostly either too hot, too dry or both for months at a time. Summer always feels oppressive to me, with the heat, the light, and most of all, the fundamentally static weather. For the vast majority of summer here in Western Australia, the days are the same, hot, clear and mostly still. I find this oppressive on some deep emotional/spiritual level, and spend most of summer spending as much of the days as possible in places as cool and dark as I can get away with, longing for the return of the winds, the 'cold' and the rain.
For example, this summer, 07/08, we had 50 contiguous days with no precipitation here in Perth, and when it finally broke with a cold front and 12-18 hours of rain, I lay in bed for hours listening to it and dozing contentedly, and eventually got up only to spend 3/4 of an hour wandering around the back yard in my shorts, just feeling the rain on my skin.
Even now, in the middle of winter, I find the wind, rain and much cooler weather satisfying on some deep, non-verbal level.
I've always thought of myself as a Water person, despite The Housemate's bizarre insistence that I'm Earth, but lately I've been pondering if there isn't more Air in my nature than I'd realised. I'm very strongly a Cat person, pet-wise, but I get the same sort of satisfaction/uplift from seeing/observing many birds. One of the little accents to my days are on the way to work, how many water-chickens and ducks I see at a particular pond on the bus route, and for how long, can make a small but noticeable difference to my mood and day. Magpie larks, Magpies, Wattlebirds, Ravens, Honeyeaters and Willie Wagtails all have very similar, though distinct, effects.
'Tis passing strange....