January is over and it looks like the sunny days are over with it. In all sorts of ways.
I was talking the other day with some friends about the Greek meteorological concept of the days of Alcyone (or Halcyon, or kingfisher bird). These being a few days in the middle of the coldest month (January) during which the sun is shining and the weather is rather warm. It so happened that this year the days of the Alcyone followed me in Barcelona and lasted for more than a fortnight.
But as all things, they are now over and in a sense, nothing seems more just than this. Since this awkwardness of sunny, warm days in the middle of January has been attributed to the kindness of the Gods, it would be somehow blasphemous to hope that it lasted forever. It does not. During the last week, the clouds silently reappeared to dominate the skies. In perfect coordination with my mood.
Shakespeare was wise enough to put in the mouth of Claudius that "When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions".
And thus my case, the case of the days of Alcyone vanishing, within a single week, which brought a paper rejection, a tough, partly misunderstood decision, the despair of its outcome and the grief of not being able to soothe hard feelings. A battalion of sorrows. Winter is here.
Sunday night, found me in, looking at the pouring rain outside the window, trying to put myself back together, to make sense of what is going on around me, close to me or inside me, at the same time. Unable, frustrated and sad, I watched my team win a boring football game and then went straight to bed, thinking that if I was to be Hamlet and ponder about some kind of profound dilemma, Shakespeare would have probably changed a famous verse of his into:
"Frailty, thy name is man".
PS. Thanks to Julien for providing the photo for this post.
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