First Day of School. MY DAUGHTER
Some shade of ochre falls like a
sun-stained linen onto the landscape this time every year. People
talk about the wonder of autumn's arrival, but that marvel just
doesn't happen save for summer's ugly death. Oh, if you think that's
bad, says summer, you should see my yearbook.
So, anyway, I killed summer. It was a
lot like running over a medium sized animal along a country highway,
middle of the night. You definitely noticed the bump, but in the fear
of uncertainty and darkness, ain't no way your empathy's enough to
make you turn around to see if you just wounded it, to see if it was
just a nick, and maybe you could wrap its tail up in an ACE bandage,
kiss it lightly on the forehead and completely forget that time you
were bitten by a perfectly healthy rattus rattus. I can see it fading
in the mirror, this whole lost pillar of my middle age, sinking
slowly into the sand.
Saturday, I found a small stash of
chanterelles, dried and hard as stone because of a false rain. The
whole season's just been one ugly affair after another. I took my
daughter out blackberry pickin, and I will say this for the drought,
that forbearance makes for sweet tidings. But of course, I was stung
by another goddamn spider. God, summer, just go away mad!
On the way home, we hammered out a
theory as to why you always wake up just before hitting the ground
before a great fall. I remember my last summer in New York on the
freshman soccer team suffering a monumental concussion and finding it
utterly fascinating that I couldn't remember anything about the day,
remarkable as it was the first day of school. So we figured that when
you dream you're falling, you actually do hit the ground before you
wake up, you just don't remember hitting the ground due to the
effects of short term memory loss following concussion. You don't
die. You just forget.
Do you hear that, summer? I haven't
died, I just forgot, what with all the violence of the collision, the
galactic impact of a complete miss, like being concussed by the
cavitation of an underwater vacuum, shot force majeure like Zeus
snapping his fingers at Poseidon, oh no you didn't. This was an
entire summer, completely lost, no love, no drama, no hard choices,
just a big, boring self-important season changing wardrobes at the
end of a long overdue fad.
5 comments:
Nothing has made me yearn for the sweet, delicious grey of Fall and Winter like the soul-crushing heat and humidity of a Southeastern summer. Every day's clear blue sky is like Mother Nature slapping you in the face as she cranks the dial past, 'HOT', to 'FUCK YOU!!!'. I don't even know why dials were made with that option.
LOVED South Carolina springs. Nothing prettier. But man, after that I'm not sure why we didn't let the South secede.
"[J]ust a big, boring self-important season changing wardrobes at the end of a long overdue fad."
Well, no need to write my memoir now.
things picked up of late
Summer, Fall... meh. Neither one could be bothered to take us hiking together, so I'm counting on Winter this year.
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