It’s the familiar double-bind. On ordinary days, working days, I feel like there is not much to write about, and I want to get off my computer anyway. On interesting days, like the days when I was travelling through Central Asia, there is so much to do and absorb that I can’t stop to write in my blog, and don’t want to turn on my computer anyway.
Today was a working day, though it started poorly as I saw some feedback that annoyed me thoroughly. I seem to be getting pricklier about my writing. Later, I got a message asking for a call and was convinced that’s it, that’s the end of this contract, and it turned out that client actually wanted to fly me to their office. So, pleasing, if inconvenient, as I was hoping to fly in the other direction at that time.
I took some interest in plants and the gardener has been infected by enthusiasm. Last night he dashed up to say he’d found a beautiful plant, please could we buy it please please. I gave him Rs 1000 and it turned out to be a little Christmas tree, or an auricaria, which is what we call a Christmas tree in Pakistan. Then this morning he arrived with a massive bunch of some palmlike thing which has now found a cauldron-like pot next to the front door.
Something small but odd happened last night – I’m not sure if it actually happened or if it was a dream. I woke up to a flashing alarm from my earthquake app that there had been a 10.0 magnitude earthquake in Afghanistan, and fear caught my heart as I know someone who has to go there for work, but not yet, Yet there was no sign of the earthquake in the list of recent quakes. Then I couldn’t sleep. But had I woken up at all?
Nevertheless, I’m removing that earthquake app.
Maybe it was a reminder of what happened last year on this day, when seismic pressures that had been building up, finally blew.