Once Upon a Summer Solstice

 

"In mid-June, the twilight seems to go on forever, the sky awash with translucent shades of rose, pearl, gray. These are evenings of enchantment — but also of apprehension. The moment the sun reaches its farthest point north of the Equator today is the moment the light starts to fade, waning more each day for the following six months. If the summer solstice doesn’t signal the arrival of winter, surely it heralds the gradual lessening of light, and with that, often, an incremental decline in disposition.

It is easy to associate sundown with melancholy, to believe that temper can be so closely tied to degrees of illumination. The more floodlit our nights, the more we seem to believe that a well-lit world is part of our well-being. But equating the setting of the sun with that of the spirit may be misguided, at variance with some essential need humans have for darkness and shadow."

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I wish I had written that. You can read the entire essay here.  Today is the Summer Solstice, the first day of summer, the longest day of the year.  It is odd, I think, that the length of the days shrinks as the days get warmer even though I understand the earth's tilt and distance from the sun and much of that.  It is odd that the sun, which now blasts me away from my dining table where I like to write, will move a bit further to the south each day, the shadows growing longer until they are finally beautiful again in late September.  It is not the fading light I will notice for the next several months but the brutality of heat and humidity and the disease of plant and mold and fungus growth it will inspire.  I will long once more for a place on the ocean with all those more fortunate than I.

In preparation for summer, I have been unable to sleep the night through.

*     *     *

If any of you doubt that the '80s were a hideous time, watch a movie that you thought was really, really good from that period.  You won't believe how bad it is.  There was just something wrong with everybody then.  It is awful, too, for many of my most cherished memories are from that decade.

*     *     *

Each night I pray, "Dear God, keep me from reality."  Not really, but you know what I mean.

*     *     *

"Some distant lamp or lighted window gleamed below me. I was thankful that I could see so little. All my senses seemed to desire to veil themselves and, feeling that I was about to slip from them, I pressed the palms of my hands together until they trembled, murmuring: "O love! O love!" many times."

And then. . . .

"Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger."

("Araby," James Joyce)