This year’s summer solstice was disappointing, a damp squib, a casualty of the great British weather. It’s tempting to think that we deserve a break after being Locked down and a miserable Spring, but it doesn’t work like that. Expectation’s a bummer and life rarely goes the way we intend or hope. That said, it’s hard not to think it should, hard not to dream.

An old Yiddish saying makes a good point:

If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans

Mick sang something similar –

The transition from chemistry to biology took a very long time, but since then life has been a great catalyst, precipitating events at an ever increasing rate. On one hand we are just insignificant links in the great chain of life that began on Earth billions of years ago with prokaryotic organisms and which has survived unbroken despite any number of setbacks. It’s also true that for life here, surviving by handing down genes is the main objective, but that’s not much of a salve for existential angst, not much to write home about.

An earlier post referenced a story about the world resting on the back of a turtle, which in turn rests on the back of another… ad infinitum, the point being there is no firm ground upon which the first turtle stands, no beginning or end, only endless repetition, but eternity is tough to grasp with a mind of linear lineage that marks time by the rise and fall of the Sun. So where’s this ramble going?

The world seems too grey and cloudy, too full of masks and meanness. The prospect of adventure is motivating and whilst the knees still flex, it’s tempting to think they might be better off on the road or the ocean where stories have a habit of writing themselves.

Time to amuse the powers that be.