What has it all been about, this summer, this piano playing, this renewing of an inner studio?

At the end of a summer holiday in my home country, which contained an inner adventure, I found myself absolutely renewed, expanded, with the kind of glistening clarity I could barely have imagined possible. Derisory concerns and pettinesses of worry had cleared completely away, as if a whirlwind had gone through my life and left only the most beautiful things, hope.

I was effervescing with the delight of it and wild with the power of myself that had been as if launched within the exhilaration. I was ready for projects, expansions, longings, dreams…

And I returned home to endless, continuous difficulty, disruption, demand, discouragement and dread.

Hmmm.

The last few weeks have consisted of repeated attempts to rediscover, retrieve, establish, rediscover, retrieve this substance of myself. I am accustomed to such dynamics but rarely have they been so ferocious. The other day I was despairing with my friend about the endlessness of it and when I saw her yesterday she had had a thought.

There is a situation I had not quite been addressing, something where the difficulty of the dynamics were risking inner collapse, compromise instead of conviction. It was easy to argue the validity of succumbing to the pressure. Any reasonable acquaintance would have commiserated with me and left it, disconsolate but rational.

My friend is not entirely convinced of the life-deciding legitimacy of what currently passes for reason.

This is what you need to do, she declared, and then outlined what felt like, in the circumstances, the most preposterous, vulnerable and socially unconventional way of relating to the circumstances.

And I knew she was right.

Suddenly I knew, this was what my summer was about: And this is how I will complete the work of it.

Now, alongside the sheer endlessness of the weariness, I feel a glimmer of excitement.

(And fear).