Summertime

I can't wait for summer to be over. Yes, the kids are home and I don't have to wake up as early most days, but I don't like the heat and there's really too much sun for my constitution altogether here in California. The garden needs watering and no one has gotten it together (certainly not myself) to initiate any sort of auto-watering. The idealized plan is for me to hire a landscaper/gardner once my salary starts coming in. Then, of course, the rains will also have begun and it will be less of an issue. But once it all cools down (usually sometime in late October) I have more energy too and so will be able to do more about the situation myself. Then comes Halloween when we don't care so much about the decrepitude of the house, the broken door, the peling paint, the rampant spider webs and drifts of dry leaves.

It must be a symptom of my agoraphobia. The first inclination is to sequester myself in my dark little office and occupy myself here, shuffling papers, studying Arabic, researching whatever strikes my fancy at the moment. I only venture outside when I have to, which is quite a bit, considering that I have to shop and shuttle children around. I go to my appointments, my cello lesson, I try to be social, but it is all an effort and certainly against my primary inclination. If it were entirely up to me, I would have the groceries delivered and minimize strangers coming to the house. Now I'm being idiotic.

Here's what I recently discovered: an amazing similarity between the folk culture of Bulgaria and a secluded pagan enclave in the Hindu Kush mountains of Pakistan. Both have similarities with British folk culture as well. All do mumming around the winter solstice. The similarities between the Bulgarian and the Kalasha are more striking as both have a very well-preserved and seemingly complete suite of seasonal pagan holidays.

http://www.site-shara.net/_kalasha/eflm-kalasha.html

http://www.ishipress.com/kalasha.htm