It’s already October — how did that happen? I either got sucked into the Vashon time warp during a too-long conversation in the bulk isle, or my frontal lobe has been disabled by the news. But it’s suddenly fall and I don’t feel prepared.
The weather is not cooperating: it was 80 degrees last week. How are we supposed to prepare for fall when it still feels summery? As if we weren’t pampered enough, climate change is making us weather-privileged too. The deluge will come, probably next week, and that will help.
It’s important to mark this change in season. And by that I don’t mean dancing in a field or chakra realignment or vegetable sacrifice — although those things will be happening on a property near you. I just mean attitude adjustment.
A recent informal survey of a total of five islanders showed that people have very strong feelings about this time of year. The sample size is large enough, I think, to generalize, so here are the study’s conclusions:
Vashon kids both hate and love going back to school, with opinions alternating approximately every hour. Those who rocked the back-to-school sales, or grew 6 inches over the summer, are, on average, “psyched,” or “like, really psyched.” The majority (66.66 percent, or two out of three) described the return to studying as “woefully depressing, akin to a Sartre novel.” So Vashon.
Island adults surveyed were more nuanced in their views, with exactly 50 percent (one person) suggesting that it really didn’t matter what the season was, they were “freaking out” because of world events. The other 50 percent (again, one person) began by saying “to every thing, turn, turn, turn, there is a season…”; I did not record the rest of the comment, as I was running in the other direction.
As I ran, I reflected on whether the news “out there” had in fact tweaked my sense of reality and temporarily twisted my perspective on, well, everything.
Often it does feel that Vashon is immune (or oblivious) to the real world. But sometimes, if I can make the ferry I’m shooting for before it pulls away — too quickly, as if lightened by a partial load — I can feel my perspective on the world clarifying, like a sandwich freed of gluten, its innards laid bare.
I applied a Vashon lens to just one of the mind-numbingly bizarre and horrible news items from the summer: Charlottesville, and the display of hatred, violence and racism that shook most of us to the core. I know, this column suddenly became extremely unfunny.
But I pondered: Are there Nazis on Vashon? Scary thought, right? Do I need to prepare for fall alt-right rallies on the Village Green? Then I imagined vegetarian Nazis, with over-indulged pets, opening their houses for the garden tour. OK, you have to admit, that’s (sort of) funny.
Maybe that’s a net positive on the perspective warp. Maybe Vashon’s distortion of the space-time continuum can provide just enough distance to laugh, and see absurdity in the very real danger of it all.
It’s not too much distance, I notice, to keep islanders from being engaged in, enraged by and working on, critical issues like racial injustice, immigration, the plight of refugees and the recent ravages of hurricanes on distant shores.
That’s what happened, I realize now: a crazed, catastrophic off-island world has so stunned me, I missed the end of summer, missed the back-to school sales, forgot to mow down the dandelion puffs that so mock my suburban lawn ambitions.
Goals by the end of the day: clean up end-of-summer projects, visit an ailing relative, get online and donate to relief efforts in Puerto Rico. It’s a balancing act, this island life thing. So I miss a month or two here and there, no biggie. After 27 years, I’m still happy to rush to Fauntleroy, wait in line to give the nice lady in the booth the ticket I already had, roll up my windows and scream various swear words at no one in particular, feel better and ride an infuriatingly half-full boat home. Ahhh…home.
— Kevin Joyce is a writer, father, dog-owner and humorist.
