05.09.26 It’s a worry that the weather would bring me out of my slump, that my kumquat would flower so soon in the year - I notice of late that the observations I bother to take down are those marked by time, its imperviousness, that without it a comment lacks some kind of primacy, any reason to care. I heed the clear sky and begin to use a hat from the hat box at work, and someone even compliments me on it. “I like your new hat,” they say. My colleague encourages his client to use ‘professional language’, then turns and mutters “Jesus fucking Christ” while watching a video of something on his phone that’s unfolding miles away. He’s shocked by the speed at which it’s happening. And that it’s happening because of something else, that’s concurrently happening in some other third place. Another colleague spends his pay on perms, limited edition sneakers and Prada sunglasses. Comes to work wearing a cheesy perma-grin, his eyes darting around the surrounds as if trying to consume the present moment before it disappears, so much energy focused on an immediate present that cannot last. One of the people we all support has taken to confusing these two, calling them by each other's names. With her, there can be a fine line to tread between play and delusion, but I think she has the capacity to see the absurdity of it, enjoys the friction she causes by suggesting these two such people might merge, might be the same. It’s a joke. One designed to push buttons. At best our job involves prompting people to do things. Slightly worse is being a bit more directive. The worst is having to tell someone to “Stop.” “Now.” It makes sense then that these clients ‘being told what to do’ would get creative with ways of clawing back some power for themselves. I tend to elude such struggles, letting others know too little for them to figure out what actually bothers me. One client is undeterred though and starts complaining mockingly that I wear the same thing all the time, “Well, the same kind of thing. Always blue, blu-ish.” What’s supposed to be a jab at me turns into some kind of appreciation for my dress sense, which she tries to back down from by adding “It’s so weird!” She then conveniently gets the zoomies and runs away, out of the room, echoing “You’re weird, you're weird...” I return home to my kumquat fallen over in its pot, soil dashed across the tiles. The exaggerated winds arrived in my absence, blowing open the buds to reveal flowers and it’s barely spring. I already know that apocalypse is signalled by disaster, but can it also be seen in untimely beauty? Like the whole 'right person, wrong time' thing that keeps happening to me, a couple of times a year. Experiencing beautiful connection with a hitherto stranger, only to realise my life will not support it, our world can't further support it. This is to say nothing of my lemon tree... 04.09.26 "I'm happy again, caught, caught in time" - Elizabeth Fraser 16.08.26 there are parts of us which are eternal and must be treated and lived in as such, but yesterday I snapped back into chronos just like that, like it was nothing 12.08.26 Hello 19.02.26 "chrysanthemums last forever, but they're not that nice" - anonymous