Salud dear reader, Happy Juneteenth, and, oh yes, summer has officially arrived! The Lovin’ Spoonfull did the original but Joe Cocker’s cover is so cool, even in the heat. Just to get us in the mood…
Welcome to another walk around my brain, a brain overheated by a heat wave caused by a heat dome caused by global warming caused by man’s CO2 emissions, which, of course, we all know is a farce, cuz as any wingnut will tell you there is no such thing as global warming, science be damned. And for that matter, your own senses count for nothing either, so what if the glaciers are melting and the polar bears are gonna be extinct and every summer is hotter than the one before it and the seas are rising and we have more bigger stronger hurricanes than ever, and, and, and…
Phew! Thanks, Buddha. I feel better now.
Which brings me to this week’s centerpiece, a prose poem which in my own humble opinion is marvelously wonderful and if someone knows someone at the New York Times, please submit it for me for the Sunday Magazine, or maybe the NEW YORKER, please and thanks. I’ll be your best friend.
As I said earlier, the Summer Solstice happened this week, and since you asked, here are the Four Seasons listed in order of my favorite to least favorite.
Numero Uno - Fall aka Autumn, by far, when God shows off Her paintbox, and the air is crisp, and the sun is warm, and you get to wear your sweater collection.
El Secondo - Spring, when a young man’s fancy turns to the fairer sex, (an older man’s, too!) and the world wakes from its slumber to infinite possibility.
Trois - Winter, when the world goes to sleep and the “bright, blessed day” gives way to “the dark sacred night.”
And last and least, Summer, yechhh! Why bother? Hot, humid, sticky. Mosquitoes. Enjoy…
I DO NOT LIKE THE SUMMERTIME
I do not like the summertime, when it is so hot you could melt the sun, and you can’t take any more clothes off because you are down to your skin; unlike the winter when no matter how cold it is you can always put on one more layer and say how you can’t wait till it’s over and you can go barefoot in the summer again.
And I do not like the summertime, especially July Fourth when noisome bothersome children run across your blanket as you wait for beautiful small town fireworks to begin, but the night won’t come and the twilight stays forever because the sky has got confused and thinks it is the endless arctic afternoon, and the band has played in the white-washed gazebo while folks sit happily in lawn chairs listening to the out-of-tune oom-pah-pah of guys that will never play with Arthur Fiedler on the Boston Commons, and still you wait for the beautiful small town fireworks that are too loud to explode over your heads, and a dog drools on your leg, lasciviously watching your ice cream cone, working its tongue with Zen concentration, and when you’re not looking, swats it to the ground with one swift, sure karate paw, and eats it, then whistles “I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy” acting all innocent, while pimply faced boys flirt awkwardly with girls far more sophisticated far sooner than they will ever be, girls that I will never kiss again and feel summer butterflies in my stomach as we make out under the bleachers while the noisy fireworks drown out the beating of the butterfly wings in my nervous stomach.
I do not like the summertime, when I lay in a hammock reading a trashy summer novel that is oh, so good, while a gnat has crossed back over the international dateline on its way to bite a Chinaman in Surabaya just to vex me by trying to drink the water in the salt-lick of my eye-pool forcing me to read the same salty passage over and over and over again until I swat the gnat who will never bite another Chinaman, or me again, for that matter but will instead ruin my reading because he is caught between my eyeball and eyelid and I must instead turn on my side in my hammock to take a summer nap just so his ruined gnat carcass can work its way into the corner of my eye for easy removal when I awake refreshed from a dream where Lassie’s mom is bringing me an iced lemonade down the sloping lawn of my rich granny’s big lake house with the wraparound porch that I didn’t have but wished I did which is why I don’t like the summertime even more now that I think of it.
And I do not like the summertime, when ants are everywhere, in my watermelon, which I love, and the potato salad, and the fried chicken, and the sticky ketchup and mustard that go on my hot dog and cheeseburger, one of each, please, and the butter and the summer corn, and the ants are everywhere except in my pants which is the only place I don’t have ants, and at the beach where sand sticks to everything and my family is driving me nutso after the endless drive to get here from there, or maybe it’s there from here, but now it doesn’t matter because I am a skinny kid and the other kids are tall and blond and tan instantly and can throw a Frisbee, and I can’t swim and am scared of the water, but it’s really not any better than the winter in this regard because I am a lousy skier, too.
And most of all I do not like the summertime, when the night smells of night blooming jasmine, and honeysuckle, and fireflies light up their amoral Morse code advertising “love for sale” in chemical reflux from their gauche show- offy irradiated green bums, though I only once ever pulled one off and put it in a jar until its glow died and I was sad, but I didn’t cry, and I knew I would never do that again, but like I said, now they’re going off everywhere to beat the band, in a cheesy Midsummer Night’s Dream, announcing that love is in the air, (and why would anybody want to beat the band, even the out-of-tune guys playing oom-pah- pah in the gazebo anyway?) and love is in the air, and in my sheets, too, as they twist around my loins and I sweat putty balls even though a slight still breeze disturbs the curtains, the currents like a ghost, a tease, a woman’s nightie, knowing that you are asleep above me, upstairs, and we’ve just met and we will be together forever so I can wait and be patient, but I can’t wait, because I want forever to start now, and it has, and...
...oh, wait. I guess I do like the summertime, for that is when I first… met… you.
Damn, that was romantic! Well now that I got us all worked up let’s have a look at summer’s little sex machines; those naughty fireflies, showing their luminescent booty. Somebody… you there! Cue the fireflies! Coming to your backyard soon as those cicadas move out.
And now, as they used to say in more genteel civilized times, let us refresh ourselves with music. Grab an iced tea, a lemonade. Be bold; combine them for an Arnold Palmer and enjoy a classic theme song by Percy Faith (really? yes, really) and his orchestra. Sandra Dee + Troy Donahue =
Dont’cha just love those French Horn rips in the first “A” section? Viva la simpler times. Stay cool in the heat, dear reader, and see ya’ next week. till then,
Thanks, Su. I love those recordings that evoke reams of emotions and memories with just a few introductory notes. A Summer Place is one of them. Now enjoy perpetual summer. I'm off to Mt. Hood.
Fantastic prose poem! Even though summer is my favorite season. Luckily I now live in almost perpetual summer, with a few dabs of spring thrown in for good measure. Thanks for the Percy Faith tune...I have not heard that melody for years and years but as soon as the first bar sounded the ball was bouncing. BTW: Mt. Hood just got 7 inches of snow. In June.