Summer Time

So, the first day of Summer, huh?

Yesenia and I drove to the gym, this evening. We've worked it out that you have to get there pretty much after 9 PM if you want to have access to any of the machines. When I worked from home, I liked to go in the late morning and early afternoon, because it was pretty empty and you had the run of the place. Of course, everyone else who went at that time was a middle-aged (or older) housewife, so the view wasn't great.

The trade-off for going to the gym at 9 PM turns out to be that's when all the strippers do their workouts, so the view is much, much better.

Anyway, on the way to the gym tonight, the sky was a cloudless, elegant glowing royal blue, with hints of burgundy at the horizon. All of the trees and houses were stark black cutouts against it. Really a beautiful and rare view. A view without sound, if that makes any sense? Possibly not, but that's how it felt.

All of my artist friends are heading into their exciting Summer projects, and what remains of my own ragged artists' soul is raring to go, too. I can feel that feeling that always comes with the last days of Spring. It's impossible to give a name to - I've never seen it described anywhere else, but I can't imagine I'm the only one to ever be struck so. I've taken to calling it 'the feeling of seven,' because the closest I can describe is being in a canoe on a New England lake in high Summer, as a child. Maybe it's something like the feeling of endless possibility? Unbound joy? Much sadness in there, too. I've gotten this feeling so rarely, and been unable to hold onto it for more than a moment at a time.

Mostly, it's an elusive feeling about elusive feelings. It's the opposite side of the safe areas of wry melancholy I usually travek around in. It's far, far more elemental than that.

What is it?

D.