122. Do You Dream Of A Place In The Sun 🌞
I have had the MOST WONDERFUL responses to this post, thank you for reading and responding - my absolute favourite thing to do is connecting with people all around the world.
One special reader took the time to send me the most incredible haiku they’d written in response to my announcement - please see #3 below for the first haiku I’ve ever received 🫶🏼
Friends,
IT’S THE WEEKEND!
Here’s three things you may find interesting and/or meaningful.
1. A Playlist 🎧
MUSIC TO WASTE YOUR LIFE ON SOCIAL MEDIA TO.
2. A Place In The Sun 🌞
Do you dream of a ‘place in the sun’?
I’m most certainly guilt of doing this - imagining myself moving to a place I’ve just spent 5 beach holiday days in 😬 spending afternoon strolls gazing in real estate windows and figuring out which herbs I’ll be growing in my (imaginary) garden once I sell all my things in London and move.
This newsletter post felt like she was writing it just for me!
“I don’t know about you, but when things in my life get a bit stressful, I dream of one thing- ‘a place in the sun.’ This is usually a stone farm house, sat in land that produces some sort of harvest once a year - an olive grove, a vineyard, a field strewn with hazelnut trees. I’m not that fussed what it is to be honest.
This ‘place in the sun’ will have flagstones warmed by the morning sun. There will a big, roaring fire for winter feasts and a dusty path that leads to a foreign village where there is a butchers and a bakers and a grocers that is still manned by some churlish old woman who doesn’t accept debit cards. There will be a bar in this village too, somewhere with a few bistro tables out front, and a kind-eyed proprietor who knows my name and brings me a strong cup of coffee every morning whilst I sit and read the papers like a proper grown-up.”
and in reality …
“Except of course, the chances of us every owning a place in the sun are slim, almost non-existent, in fact. My husband and I are both creatives, born the wrong side of the 1970s and with zero trust funds in place. Our generation did not make fortunes being editors or in property. (Though we were a damn sight luckier than the generation after us). As I am reading Frances Mayer describe the ochre-coloured villa, Bramasole, that she bought in the Tuscan countryside my first thought is how? (Mayer was an academic for God’s sake!)
And so I have made peace with the fact we may never own a place in the sun. Better than that, I have started to interrogate why I ever wanted one in the first place. And this is what I have come up with.
We yearn for a place in the sun, because we hanker after a purer existence to the one we have filled with dirty nappies and bad days at work and the complex, messy machinations of real life. A place in the sun is not what we really want. It is what it represents: an idealised version of the lives we lead.
It is a place of pure imagination, bedecked with a few hazy memories of holidays and rental villas gone by. The idea of a place in the sun is what seduces us, not the reality. After all, even sniffing melons in village markets probably gets tiresome after a while anyway.”
3. A HAIKU! 🫶🏼
Written by one of my readers, Kiel, who was kindly introduced to my newsletter by his mother-in-law, Melissa, (who I have the privilege of calling a friend after spending time together on a yoga retreat in Puglia a few years ago 💙).
//
In thinking of evolution into new spaces and activities, I cobbled together this haïku.
——
Each element chants.
Winds gust, waters rush, so on…
But an inner light?
Maybe a whistle?
A solar hush calling dawn…
Hymns of calming might.
If we could name it,
What would we rely upon
Beyond touch-sense-sight?
It’s serenity.
Released dreams, risen and gone.
Full night. Peace in flight.
From within, let out.
Sing future songs. Creation.
Resulting delight.
THANK YOU KIEL! 💙
See you next Sunday.