|
The
first breath of summer brings with it a hunger to catapult over
ourselves, to grow wild. To climb, vine-like, beyond work and
darkness and books. To cling to the wall and blossom there.
Not to go on to new things right away,
but to take the old ones and make them flower.
Summer takes us back to what
is most basic, what we need to do to be truly whole. Summer
is poetry without criticism.
|
Not to change, but to flourish.
We remember things about ourselves in summer,
the things we have always loved about being alive.
We strip ourselves of sweaters and of pretensions,
of windows and of neckties. We come out to dance and to breathe
on liquid nights, and we collide with what and whom we've been
ignoring or avoiding. We embrace them, grow passionate about them,
call them our own.
Otherwise, we let them go. There is too
much life on balmy streets to squander on obligations.
Summer has no obligations. Only desire
- - the low buzz of something you want to happen.
Summer takes us back to what is most basic,
what we need to do to be truly whole. Summer is poetry without
criticism.
So vacation isn't what I'd call it. It's
a hovering, a plumbing of the depths. Sit in one place, but swing
there.
Why travel, when there is so much joy,
and even purpose, in stasis? Why move cross- country, when a quest
for wholeness in our own yard may take us further? To places that
can't be photographed…
If I ever travel the world, I'll do it
in the spring, when youth rages in my veins and remembers life
as it might be. Or in the fall, when wisdom seeks me out, and
I grow analytical - - and just a bit older.
But summer, to me, is about staying still
and listening. To the brief whisper of the evening, between the
pink-orange sun and the warm gray dusk and the languid movement
of blackness that slides into night.
Summer is the time to stretch yourself
over the moment.
To experience the things that are slowly
becoming other things, at their own pace.
To transform what is good into what is
true.
To decide what is unnecessary, and strip
it off.
To take what is beautiful, and make it
yours.
|
