I don’t think I’m alone in feeling this way…

I hate this wind and the brown sky and the pluming brown dust and the brown, brown oval… except where the sprinkler has leaked and there is a patch of rich green – a puddle reflecting what used to be.

The scraping leaves exfoliate my heart like an acid. On days like to today (today, when it was supposed to rain) I find it so hard to believe that everything will be okay.

As I walked this morning, a few spats of rain found their way to the ground, like salt on a meal. When I got home I looked at the radar. Down south, there is rain. So that is something.

Yesterday at the fruit shop, the cashier lady, just returned from 6 weeks “at home” in Bhutan commented that “compared to home, Australia is a desert”. She landed, on Friday, in Sydney, thinking it an overcast day, expecting cool air, and discovered hot air and the acrid scent of smoke.

At the Uniform Shop, there was discussion about how a few years ago, you could survive the summer, working from home with no air conditioning. You would laugh about the hot days, drag in a standing fan, sit there with wet washers on your shoulders, put ice blocks in your drinks. But now the summers are too hot for too long. And as the long days pass, the house gets hotter and hotter until its not much cooler inside than out. Everybody smiled and nodded. Nobody mentioned climate change.

Gladys Berejikilian (that woman whose economic international forays caught my interest) said now is not the time. We are a bunch of potatoes being peeled and sliced into long fingers. Close by, we can hear that unique sizzling crackle of hot oil. We are saying to each other “this is not the time to talk about potato chips.”

Look at the recipe book, sweetheart. Can’t you see the picture?