Dear future hubster

 Dear future hubster, today I am going to be one of those people I usually find annoying, saying great things about somebody who's just died, not having mentioned them or their work's impact on my life in the recent or not so recent past. And maybe I am also one of those cliché girls, swearing on a book that changed their lives. Many books have changed my life though. Today's story is about The Unbearable Lightness of Being, of which I own multiple copies in at least two languages - I thought I'd read it in 3 but I'm not so sure anymore. I also distributed many more during the years to people as a sort of parting gift - if you ever meet somebody who received one from me, please tell them that it means that there was a time when I felt so close to them that I wanted to let them in on a revelation; that I wanted to share with them something I thought I'd understood about life. That revelation, understanding, interpretation, simplified to a motivational poster leng...

 Dear future hubster, if there was one good thing coming out of the lockdown misery of the early pandemic days (erm, first two years), then it must be the reduced occurence of bra-wearing, and my attitude towards free titties (my own, mostly).  I now give fewer fcks when venturing outside without said clothing item (while, I  need to clarify for historical records, I do wear other clothing items) - the number is not zero yet, but it is lower.  Who knew. 

 Dear future hubster, I'm sure I've said it before, but in case I haven't: home is not a place. Although sometimes it might look like a place,  like a moderately ugly orange sofa in the Tshukudu house. But it's so many more things.  It is where you're picked up from the airport and handed balloons, water, GT; or where you already have metro tickets on arrival and don't have to line up with all the losers at the ticket machines; you also know which line to take without having to check. Home is where somebody gives you instructions in a way that makes sense to you, none of that 300 meters northeast, but "after the green door". Home is where you get a key, can make your own coffee (if you figure out how the buttons work), and you know you can grab a few hangers for your clothes - sometimes you even get a dedicated drawer! It is where somebody gets grapefruit juice and oat milk for your breakfast; where there is late-night ramen prepared if you and your je...

 Dear future hubster, imagine that you live in the early ages of science when all the knowledge we now take for granted is just starting to emerge. When all that the community knows for sure is that some times of the year dark lingers for longer. Very literal dark, the opposite, the lack of light. Imagine that in that early age you can't artificially create light, and although you understand it comes and goes, you can't measure time accurately to tell and predict when. And although you and everybody has the profound belief that after the long dark, light will come again, although it is based on experience year after year, at the core of it, it is "just" that: a belief, a hope. For you also know that it's never a given that you and your family will live to see that day, that the dark wasn't lingering for too long to damage life and livelihood.  Wouldn't you then, when light does eventually win over darkness, bringing promises of warmth, harvest, life, feel ...

 Dear future hubster, what time of the year is this? Is it Mumford & Sons season, or is it Tom Waits season? Which one comes first? Do they overlap?  And if neither of them make your heart sink and expand and ache and glow, do you even have one?