Richard Pierce

Richard Pierce – author, poet, painter

Life, Writing

Day 199

It’s 38C in my office, too hot even for me, so I’m sitting in the garden typing this into my phone, just like I did in Agios Nikiolaos. Except I don’t have the glorious view of the bay in front of me, nor the even more glorious view of M lying on her sun lounger in one of her many bikinis. And not the buzz of multiple languages coming out of Giorgo’s bar. What I do have is a warm and gentle breeze, an out-of-control dog in a garden somewhere down the street barking crazily, and Jam, the one-eyed cat, drinking plentifully and quietly from the water bowl near the base of our sole non-fruitbearing olive tree in the shade. And my stomach’s been betraying me for the past 24 hours, to add insult to injury.

Ironically enough, M was so chilled in her office in the house this morning, she wore a cardigan for most of it. My strategy of opening the door and windows to my office bore fruit only until about noon (and I got up late – 7) because I’d gone to bed late due to said betrayal and felt dreadful. Anyway, whinge over, if it ever was a whinge rather than a statement of unfortunate fact.

Another irony: I walked to the post office to post my latest snail mail letter to Colonel L in the US. I made sure to walk in the shade, even if that shade was just from small harden walls only tall enough to give shade to my legs. When I got there, I was told no post being picked up today or tomorrow due to the heat. Understandable, as I think most post vans aren’t air-conditioned. On the other hand, this kind of weather is only going to become more frequent unless humankind as one decides to make radical changes to the way it lives (and that includes no more mobile phones, no server farms, less driving, less travel, less polluting industries, less meat consumption, corporates being forced to change their polluting ways). We all need to make sacrifices. Maybe the last push by me at work to go the last 5% to being totally paperless will be the last one before we bin the internet and go back to paper (I hope not, but then my work carbon foot print is very small, and my niche on the server farm minute, but … circular argument ensues).

I can sense it getting dark earlier than even two weeks ago. This is the way of the seasons. All this is the way of the seasons, and the way of extinctions.

AGGIE’S ART OF HAPPINESS – CHAPTER 152


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