Somehow, it’s only the 6th of November and already the days are accelerating so fast it may as well be January 1st. Does anyone else feel this? Just last week it was October, and I did not feel this way. I saw months ahead, in which the weather would continue to gradually cool, and in which I would accomplish a series of tasks, for which I would have ample time.

This morning I woke up and it started to hail. If you’ve never heard hail falling on a metal roof, let me tell you, it’s quite something. My mind wouldn’t even accept it for a moment: I knew it wasn’t rain, but it also wasn’t sticks (which will sometimes blow down from our eucalyptus tree during a storm) and I couldn’t think what other type of debris might cause that regular rat-a-tat. Maybe it was tiny birds. Maybe it was snails, like a plague. But of course, seconds later, I realized hail exists, and ran out to see our yard begin to fill with small white pellets of ice, only to be overtaken by a bone-shaking wall of rain.

And also, it’s November 6th. Basically Christmas. Nearly June.

Other ways in which time plays tricks: I missed a doctor’s appointment yesterday, a regular ENT visit that I make every six months or so. It just didn’t come up on my calendar somehow, and by the time I realized, it was an hour too late. But when I called to reschedule, they didn’t have another appointment until March.

There are all these little time-skips, things that take longer than they feel like they should, that then are over much too fast. You chart your life on future appointments, on appointments with the future. Which is then suddenly past. Is this why I love book so deeply? The only places you can go that hold steady. Even television isn’t quite the same, with the way it grows visually dated, the film or digital recordings seeming to degrade before your eyes.

Anyway. Last week we had too many pastries. This week, we have an outrageous amount of soup. The lettuce in my garden is starting to get big enough to pick a leaf or two, here or there, and the pea shoots are flowering too early and too low to the ground, and I can’t figure out why. I will sauté the radish greens with garlic, and they will be spicy on the plate. underground, flower seeds are rumbling towards germination, and a number of tomato volunteers have taken over a patch of ground, where the old fruit spectacularly exploded. The past and the future coming together in a sharp green stem that wants to live its little life.

Enjoy your little lives this week my friends. Here is the present, for now at least.