2004-08-06 - 1:14 p.m.
It’s coming to an end. You can feel it in the air, see it in the color of the sky. Even sense it lurking behind the silence that envelopes the solitary wren’s song...
I’m talking about the summer here, folks. It hasn’t been much of a summer, really. Mostly we’ve had way too much rain. July, in fact, was the rainiest on record. Not that I’m complaining, really. I like rainy days. I especially like rainy nights replete with crashing thunder and lightning flashing negative imprints of the world on my impressionable cortex. Way cool, as the kids say.
Yesterday I spent the afternoon mowing the lawn. Spent it. Yeah, that’s what I did. I took it out of my pocket where it resided full of limitless possibility and cashed it in on a manicured lawn. Would’ve preferred something a little more exotic, really, but utilitarian necessity trumps wanton desire. Usually.
Okay, I’m rambling a bit. Time to get back on track and write something brilliant. Okay. Yep, time to do exactly that. I agree. Hmmm…. Hmmmm… ………
Okay, here’s something: As I was mowing I could feel the change in the air. It was as simple as light and dark. Every time I passed from shadow to sunlight and back again, I felt it: the air of the world no longer retaining the heat of the sun. When immersed in sunlight I felt warm. In fact, mowing away from the sun, feeling its energy penetrating the shirt on my back and radiating into my body gave, to say it bluntly, my entire being an almost orgasmic delight. There is no better earthly experience when one is slightly chilled. But when one is in shadow, feeling bodyheat draining away, the somewhat scary realization hits that summer is losing its grip. The air is already autumnal, neutral and wavering, neither inherently hot nor cold, but trending inexorably towards winter.
Stop it. Stop it. Stop it! It’s still officially summer and the dog days have yet to commence. So stop it already!
Okay, I will. But there’s this really profound insight I still have to get in. It has to do with the mowing. It’s a metaphor of sorts, though it’s either too vacuous or evocative to be effectively explicated. So I will just put it out there for my dear reader’s (readers’?) perusal. So here it is: I’m on my little tractor, mowing a great shrinking circle, going round and round the perimeter of the big back yard. The sun is going down and each time I mow along the barn’s side of the yard I am in shadow. I cut a strip that marks almost precisely the demarcation between light and dark. I cut a swath into the light and by the time I come around again, shadow has nudged up to and overtaken the mark. I cut another strip; the shadow again nudges against and engulfs it, keeping score in a race between the sun going down and my going ‘round and ‘round and ‘round.
Maybe it’s me, but it's cloudy today and I’m having just a wee bit trouble staying warm.
