Under Construction ….

Since we got back from points East, I don’t really feel like my feet have touched the ground. A series of shifts, of changes and new developments – one after the other – and of course, the work of getting settled back in.

Ordinarily, routine helps immensely with the process of readjustment. But this time, it’s been different. There hasn’t been much that’s been ‘routine’ to settle into, so I feel it’s take an inordinate amount of time to get my bearings (and I”m not entirely there yet … but it’s coming).

It also seems that my entire neighbourhood – and much of the city I live in – is currently undergoing roadworks or construction of some sort. It’s a reality in a Prairie town, of course, that the summers are short and so the construction and road repair needs to be compressed into just a few months between last frost and first snow … . But feeling as dislocated as I have, I find the visual  and auditory impact of the upheaval around me more unsettling than I normally would.

Everyone’s digging holes in the ground.

Covering up and uncovering things.

Turning it all over and over.

Leaving things in undone heaps and putting up barriers everywhere.

Even so … I have been able to find some humour in all of it. There’s a certain absurdity to the whole process of roadworks that is starting to fascinate me. Especially the final clearing-up-and-getting-sorted for the next job stuff.

Just a block and a bit from my house, there seems to be a convention happening. A Congregating. A Gathering… in anticipation of Something Important Happening Very Soon.

Maybe they are preparing for migration. Autumn is on its way, to be sure … the leaves are beginning to turn her and there: early warning signs.

In any case, I think it requires a new word, something that speaks to the flocking, grouped nature of these things:

A Hazard of Barricades, perhaps…?

Or maybe it’s simpler than that. They’re just hanging out, relaxing after the work day.

And they decided to have a party?!?