Split Hemispheres

It was so cold last night I unfurled my second doona. This morning when I was dazzled awake by the late spring sun, I could feel a little bit of Antarctica strafing my snout. And then, when I strolled up Knocklofty, there was Mount Wellington glowing with a generous dusting of snow.

We are three days away from the beginning of summer, and I am filled with unseasonable zing.

I am beginning to wonder whether the indecision that sometimes assails me originated in the move I made to the antipodes all those years ago, and never quite being able to reconcile myself with the inversion of seasons. The chill of this morning gladdened me not just because I thrive in the cold, but because my Anglo-Swiss soul is appeased. It knows it should be heading for winter, that November should be drawing the autumn to an end, and that it should not have to be dragged, kicking and screaming, from spring into summer. My Tasmanian body, though, is alert to the burgeoning vegetable patch, roses, raspberries and early daylight. It tries to persuade my retreating soul to lighten up, mingle, stay awake, eat lettuce, be more vocal, and spend more time with friends.

The hemispheric split is not unlike the disjunction that any being who has been uprooted from familiar territory battles with; the constant to-ing and fro-ing between our own lived lives and the tendrils that hold us to the past and dear ones whose lives continue elsewhere. The way this makes us feel both plagues and enriches us. It ebbs and flows. The hemispheric split has no such nuance. It is defined by its opposition and that opposition is directional.

I know in my mind that we are all heading in the same direction – that just as night follows day, summer will follow spring, no matter where I am, but the hemispheric split creates Spring/Autumn, Summer/Winter as dichotomies. And I feel as is if my soul is heading in one direction while my mind is heading in the other. No sooner does one thought or feeling enter my mind, when its polar opposite presents itself in equal measure.

Is it any wonder that I so often find myself in such an agony of self-doubt?

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