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It’s becoming midsummer, and temperatures are rising significantly. Yesterday was the warmest day of the year so far, but there have already been a few hot days in June. It’s a good thing I bought a portable air conditioner two years ago. It provides me with a little coolness on hot days, although the temperature here in my new apartment is actually quite bearable.

In June, a year after buying my new bike, which I’m still very happy with, I didn’t let the heat stop me from going for a few rides. I cycled to Goslar (in the Harz Mountains) once and to Helmstedt once. And I also did a few short rides through the nearby parks, for example when I couldn’t sleep well again.

But now I’m not only mobile by bike, I’ve also bought a new used car after four years without one. Not so much for myself, as occasional car sharing would still be enough for me, but my fiancée has to get to work from August onwards. It’s a 2025 Hyundai i10 demonstration car. The interior is surprisingly spacious for the small size of the car. The engine isn’t particularly powerful, but it’s more than enough for the flat terrain here. Android Auto is also available. Only finding a parking space will be nerve-wracking again.

Speaking of my fiancée, we have now officially started planning our wedding and are looking for venues. Our schedule is a bit fuller with appointments over the next few weeks.

Last month, I also traded in my watch for a newer model with LTE and switched the 5G modem for my home to an outdoor model. In doing so, I realized how easy it is to sell electronics at reasonable prices on eBay.

Last but not least, at the end of the month, I had the opportunity to test the punctuality of Deutsche Bahn once again and ended up having to stay at a hotel in Frankfurt am Main.

Interactions & Comments

 

Ours is a dark and chaotic world. We are all in need of lights to follow. On that island I felt I had met someone who had made a life on her own terms. I was increasingly sure that I, on the other hand, had not… And, as the years passed, I began to feel unmoored, like a piece of timber drifting on the current. The feeling grew. I worked long hours trying to succeed in a modern world I didn’t like very much. I’d doubled my salary, and then doubled it again, but rarely felt any satisfaction or happiness… I began to lose faith in the certainties that had sustained me. I was growing less sure, and more confused. My work took me to places where the world was breaking; places that had, until now, survived. I saw children lying under sheets of tin by roadsides, and hospitals in slums plagued with rats and filth. Despair began to follow me home. Birds like lapwings and curlews were vanishing from the skies above our farm. I could no longer see the point in trying to mend our fields when everything around us was so broken. I had once had endless reserves of hope and self-belief, but they were beginning to run out. Some nights I couldn’t sleep. I’d lie anxiously staring at the ceiling. Part of me just wanted to escape. To run away and hide…

I couldn’t stop thinking about the old woman on the rocks. There was something still alive in her that had died in me. I had seen it in her eyes. I needed to go back and work out what it was – the urge was overwhelming. It was like someone had shown me a few lines of a truly great book and then closed the covers tight shut. I had no idea how I might ever get back there…

Seven years passed. Then, one day, I wrote Anna a letter, and sent it to her via the guide who had taken me. I asked if she was still going out to work on the island and whether she might let me visit her, learn about her work, and maybe write about her. I would keep quiet, work to earn my keep, and try to stay out of the way.

— James Rebanks, from the Prelude of “The Place of Tides” (Mariner Books, June 24, 2025)

Notes:

• Book Review: A warming tale of gathering eiderdown in Norway. Shepherd’s Life author trades the Lake District for a remote island just below the Arctic Circle, where he joins an ‘unbreakable’ septuagenarian keeping an ancient family tradition alive.
• Book Review in The Guardian: “Duck Tales. The Lakeland shepherd heads to a Norwegian island where eiderdown is harvested to learn lessons about nature and humanity”
• Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.

The future is not an escapist place to occupy. All of it is the inevitable result of what we do today, and the more we take it in our hands, imagine it as a place of justice and pleasure, the more the future knows we want it, and that we aren’t letting go.

Hope matters so much. So does a willingness to take responsibility, not for all the things in all the world but for what is ours: The limited but meaningful scope of what we do today.

Sometimes (okay a lot of the time) (okay all the time) I don’t know what to do. Today or any day. There are both too many options and not enough. Out of all these possibilities, how can I find the ones that are doable and actually helpful? 

I guess I can start with doable and go from there. 

BTW, this is where we're going with WordLand. We can have a nice social web that builds on simple open formats. I will make an instance of this to show it can be done, both sides, reading and writing. They will work wonderfully with each other. You can write a nice reader and/or writer and it will work with this simple network. A technological coral reef. Think of the MacWrite and MacPaint of the open social web. Enough to get the ball rolling. #

Looking forward to putting linkblogs in WordLand to bed, I don't think too many people other than myself will use the feature, but I wanted to get it right and then move on. #

You should write because when you know that you’re going to write, it changes the way you live.

(...)

That’s the promise: you will live more curiously if you write. You will become a scientist, if not of the natural world than of whatever world you care about. More of that world will pop alive. You will see more when you look at it.

(...)

When I have a piece of writing in mind, what I have, in fact, is a mental bucket: an attractor for and generator of thought. It’s like a thematic gravity well, a magnet for what would otherwise be a mess of iron filings. I’ll read books differently and listen differently in conversations. In particular I’ll remember everything better; everything will mean more to me.

This is precisely what I noticed after I started writing regularly too: I pay attention to things more; I remember things more clearly; I try to lead a life worthy of being written about. After being reminded of all that, how can I not write?

*   *   *

The fireflies are out in full force today. I can't remember noticing them in New York before, which I suspect is a fault of memory rather than observation (I hope that writing will help with this). At dusk they were unmissable in the woods of Forest Hills. They congregate on the ground in such numbers blades of grass sag under their weight. V swatted and poked at them with his hat. I have spent enough time with him to know that there is no use telling him not to do silly things like that.

Fireflies do not fly as much as hover, suspending their lanterns beneath their blurred wings as if to show off their gifts (which I suppose they are). When they do move they leave curved trails of light behind them.

Today was J's birthday. Originally she had planned a morning run to celebrate at 6 AM, but when I woke up this morning and checked my phone there was a text from J telling me to go back to sleep. She was too tired to run (and thank Frith for that!). Instead she came over for lunch and I treated her to some dessert. The only benefit of forgetting one birthday is that it makes you temporarily more vigilant for the ones that follow. I atone for my mistakes one birthday at a time.

Ube and blackberry cake (left), strawberry yuzu mille crepe (right). Delightful, both of them.

A disproportionate number of my friends have birthdays right around now, late June, early July. J said she didn't like that her birthday fell so close to Independence Day, since people are always traveling for the Fourth. This made me wonder: when would be an ideal time of year to have a birthday? Far enough away from other holidays. Maybe April or May? September? It's hard to say. Growing up, April and May birthdays always clashed with spring break and final exams, and those with birthdays during summer break rarely got to celebrate with their friends from school. It's easy for me to want things to be different until I force myself to imagine the way I would want them to be and realize that maybe I don't have things so bad after all.

Pistachio soft serve with hot fudge, lemonberry soft serve with strawberry syrup. They were dreadful. To eat something unhealthy and not even enjoy it is the worst of sins. Oh, how the regret burns!

Listening to Bridge Over Troubled Water today, per a recommendation from a kind reader. I love this song!