This morning I stare at a waning moon and a smattering of stars. The clouds will move in this afternoon and the rest of the weekend will be wet. The late summer feels finished. Leonard tugs at the leash. There is something I can’t see in shadows of the hollybush edge.

Yesterday I took the movement students outside. I hadn’t planned it but room scheduling has been difficult. We ran off what must have been a hundred pigeons from a patch of grass along the quayside. The swan, of course, we avoided. We moved through warrior positions and balanced poles on our fingertips: “Knees bent, knees bent.” It is an odd mantra to have carved into one’s subconscious.

Be ready for anything.

The swan remained centerstage. Unflustered. Such confidence for such a relatively small creature.

There was more wind than we would have liked, but it felt good to move in the fresh air – with the fresh air – outside of the little black box where we all spend the majority of our days. With another group of students, I would have had them let the wind push them around. I would have had them risk the judgemental looks from people passing by. I would have reminded them to commit, to challenge the onlookers’ projections of insecurity, to confuse them. Forget them. Forget the swan. But these students have been affected by the Covid restrictions for most of their theatre studies. There’s little trust in each other, little trust in in their own bodies… little trust in me.

The sunshine barely grazed my skin, but felt good on my retinas. Since the morning and evening walks are in the dark now, it felt like a flicker of past already. Everything is softer now, during this transition. Winter’s sharpness will come, but right now there is a bluntness to the days.

The afternoon is an oversized, red rubber ball that smells like the dark side of childhood.

Everything in its time, returning in its time with a surprising perspective. I am in a holding pattern. Holding so very much.