Deep in summer, the long-dead winter moans for its lost soul, the earth grows fat and sleepy, peach-skinned sunset skies turn into hot nights, drowsy appeals, fan squeaks, then dawn, a brief coolness, and the lava air flows again. All up and down the streets, flatbed trucks are parked on sidewalks, selling watermelons. The owners just cover up with plastic tarps and sleep in them, a seasonally repetitive party, light and dark green spheres of cooling delight, all for 1 Yuan (approx. $.20 USD) a pound. In the unfolding summer, life has burst out of every crevice and crack, covering limbs and twigs, plump and green, bright flower trumpets and saxophones blowing out color, seeding, singing, drooping, awakening to the sound of thunder, cascades of rain frolic, evaporation, summer glee madness, exploding . . . exploding. Pungent smells of life and rot, summer is a season on steroids. A hot night stillness, puddles from an earlier rain, people freed from work flowing down the avenues, out-of-the-box happiness, crowds along the Yellow River buzzing like bees in search of night flowers. Lights on the river, Monet, dark wheat fields with crows, ‘The Scream’ silently drowning, whirlpools of the Wizard of Oz disappearing downstream. The precise lines of the skyscrapers, like escalators of life moving upwards. Lights turn on and off like xylophone notes. Tympanic expectations so loud I want to cover my ears, but don't because it's basic human music, full of wants and desires and longing, like Miles Davis going up the scale, holding it there for an impossible moment, then passing it off to Mercedes Sosa, whose voice pardons everyone, everywhere, and the gurgling, mating call of prehistoric toads is mirrored in the showy cars and the expensive phones, while monks spin prayer wheels high in the Himalayas. Hope gathers and falls like invisible rain. If you believe in your inner joy it will respond, and the more you believe it, the more it will become you, without all the props advertisers coax you into believing you must have in order to be something. Any ordinary summer evening, if you listen to it, will tell you the truth, there in the murmuring night green of the willows along the riverbank. Explore further. Let your heart out. Skepticism is just limitation that’s gone to college. Consciousness beckons. Let the lightening of your being fork out in all directions. Reject anything anyone has ever told you. Seek it out for yourself. Trust . . . because within you are all the answers that you should mine with the tenacity of a Deadwood gold miner. Veins of knowledge flow through the simplest things. Every summer I add to my mind box. This summer I will add: A sharp knife disappearing in watermelon skin and the pink, water-full aroma that escapes. The odor of ozone, like the smell of old screens just before a thunderstorm. The gray undersides of leaves rising in the slightest wind. The lazy green of summer grass. The invigorating contrast of walking through sun and shadow, heat and coolness. The way, on a hot day, the Earth is stunned, hardly awake, a slowly blinking reptile regarding everything. The way the body will seize and celebrate the slightest breeze. How the songs of birds will collapse you back into your childhood. How shucking corn will release the peasant in you. How ants turn an ice cream puddle into their own Woodstock. How flowers teach about color. How eating outside makes everything taste better. How a simple fan can save you from ruin. How music sounds so much better in the sun. The sudden everythingchanging—tug—on your fishing line. Dandelion interlopers on manicured lawns. The drool of a ripe peach. The sybaritic droop of grape bunches. The lunatic singing of summer frogs. The caveman smother of barbecued meats. Moon on lakes and rivers. Galaxies within fireworks. Chinese children recovering from school. Seed teardrops in watermelon flesh. And the photograph below of the dumpling maker at the Lanzhou night market: What will you put in your summer mind box?
1 Comment
Mary
7/25/2014 07:44:43 am
Our watermelons are between $6 to $10 here -- $6 is a sale!! They are a cooling delight and so summer! Our summer has been perfect. It is 70-85 during the day and 65-70 at night. Just absolutely beautiful and it is almost August. I think I'll just adopt your summer mind box list it covers a lot of categories and one to give a try. Pictures are wonderful too, enjoy your summer!!
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