The summer is over. One of the minor annoyances with living this far up north on the globe we call home is that the summers are short and intense. Sure, we get high temperatures and can enjoy shorts-weather, but the window is limited. End of May until end of August.
Before the end of May there’s the neurotic and twitchy north-swedish spring. After the end of August the slow and dull north-swedish fall takes over.
Well, it’s not all bad. September is a great month actually. Leaves turn into sparkling oranges, yellows and browns. But October is a wet and dull month, at least here in Umeå. November, the snow still hasn’t arrived in full and that means an intense and very harsh cold until the snow might finally wrap the surroundings in white.
But now it’s September. It’s been an intense summer, and while I feel a slight pang of sorrow for not doing some of the things I set out to do, I’m trying to enjoy September for what it is. It’s a cool month, literally. I try to take a walk each day, and even if they’re not always of the long variety there’s always at least an hour or two when I’m not at home.
Today is the exception.
However, that doesn’t stop my beloved cat from enjoying the balcony. Even though she’s limited to the apartment she sure does enjoy the balcony. At least once a day –if the weather is bright– she scratches the door and insists on sauntering outside to sit in one of my awful plastic chairs for a bit. Every time I imagine that if she smoked, she’d have one of those yellow french Galois-cigarettes attached to a slender mouthpiece, like some diva from the 1920s might. She’d sit out there, enjoying the fall-sun, taking in the fresh air while ignoring the irony of how she pollutes the same with her cigarette. Because that’s how cats function. They accept the paradox. Just like I imagine a 1920s style diva might accept the very same paradox.
