I'M IN THE PHONE BOOTH; IT'S THE ONE ACROSS THE HALL
I think I will always love summer, but not for the usual reasons (butterflies, mint juleps, days at the beach, whatever). As pleasant as those things are, I think summer is appealing because it's the only season with a definite, clear, and indisputable shelf life. Winter can last forever, and spring and fall are just subsidiaries of summer, and besides, school goes on through all of those no matter what. Summer doesn't mean hot weather as much as it is an absence of having to deal with classes and reading. It is pure, unadulterated leisure to me. I wonder how I'll handle having to work year-round; I don't think I'll take it very well. That or I'll get a teaching job and prolong that feeling for the rest of my life.
Right now we're in the earliest, most uncertain, and probably best part of summer. It feels like August is never going to come, and that every book will be read and every day will be long. This is when I start to reconstruct my identity for the coming school year, something I've always done to excess. Of course, it was a much more potent feeling in high school, when I kept on feeling as if I may wake up and find myself popular (or at least happy) if I made a new skirt, dressed in a particular way, or lightened my hair with lemon juice and hydrogen peroxide. Those summers were like one long hour before a date, crimping eyelashes and applying nail polish. Now everything feels a little more brainy. I'm trying to read more books than last year, to write more, to go to the library more, to keep atrophy from setting in. I will make all kinds of irrational goals for myself but get very little done.
It won't last, and that's what's so wrenching about it. Yes, I think summers are wrenching. I think this is best seen in Mysteries of Pittsburgh (Michael Chabon). Some things can only last for a summer, and I think that feeling will always depress me. I'm not going to avoid it, though.
I think I will always love summer, but not for the usual reasons (butterflies, mint juleps, days at the beach, whatever). As pleasant as those things are, I think summer is appealing because it's the only season with a definite, clear, and indisputable shelf life. Winter can last forever, and spring and fall are just subsidiaries of summer, and besides, school goes on through all of those no matter what. Summer doesn't mean hot weather as much as it is an absence of having to deal with classes and reading. It is pure, unadulterated leisure to me. I wonder how I'll handle having to work year-round; I don't think I'll take it very well. That or I'll get a teaching job and prolong that feeling for the rest of my life.
Right now we're in the earliest, most uncertain, and probably best part of summer. It feels like August is never going to come, and that every book will be read and every day will be long. This is when I start to reconstruct my identity for the coming school year, something I've always done to excess. Of course, it was a much more potent feeling in high school, when I kept on feeling as if I may wake up and find myself popular (or at least happy) if I made a new skirt, dressed in a particular way, or lightened my hair with lemon juice and hydrogen peroxide. Those summers were like one long hour before a date, crimping eyelashes and applying nail polish. Now everything feels a little more brainy. I'm trying to read more books than last year, to write more, to go to the library more, to keep atrophy from setting in. I will make all kinds of irrational goals for myself but get very little done.
It won't last, and that's what's so wrenching about it. Yes, I think summers are wrenching. I think this is best seen in Mysteries of Pittsburgh (Michael Chabon). Some things can only last for a summer, and I think that feeling will always depress me. I'm not going to avoid it, though.
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