“Summer time and the living is easy,” says Gershwin.
Summer has officially arrived, that season when time stands still. When nothing bad can happen. When mornings, with the sun buttering the tree tops, represent a chance to start over and when everything seems possible — as it began to beguine.
Summer is one metaphor after another — a profusion of blooms, a fiery weather of dreams, a fever of the mind, a blossom of conscience, a sweating of regret and a premonition of desire.
It is the garden of the spirit that bestows respite for the imagination, with the knowledge that there is more to the world that one could understand.
Name me one masterpiece whose euphoria for July or August is equal to Wordsworth from “Daffodils.”
It is a time more mellow than autumn and more tender than spring, away from the inhospitable glare of winter.
Summer is a high, candid, definite time.
Summer is a voyeur’s paradise — as the women take off their clothes to torment men (who just stare a lot, moronic with easy pleasure). All hanging out, they become their true selves in sweet freedom — unburdened by cares.
It is the great TREK. The movement of life from indoor to outdoor, the whole street turned inside out — as if at every window people were shaking out the contents of shoe boxes, suit cases and closets.
I’m hearing summer sounds again. I can hear the neighbors talking in their garden. I can hear the sound of the wind through the magnolia, maple and elm trees, as their leaves whisper — and the birds, too. When it rains, the thunder seems to enter the rooms. Voices on the street, day and night — admitting you to intimacies through windows and thin walls. The sound of a car honking on Rexford Drive, inferior to that of a honking bird, is after all, an arbitrary decision.
But the saddest sound of summer is hearing two hearts breaking.
“Summer romance,” as a phrase, (when the two words are brought together) is something akin to “Summer soldier.” The romance carries away, just as summer soldiers run away from duty or from the reality of things.
Sun-filled romance in summer is the dramatic background for much fiction. There’s the accidental meeting and the unreasonable heightening of the season — and classically, there is an imbalance of clan or situation on hand. Chilly truths are swept away by soft clouds, the fields, petals in the breeze and the urgency of the burst open water lilies, called lotus.
Edith Wharton wrote a short novel called Summer. It is about a poor girl and a clever young man. He is alone, idling about in the sunshine. She is there, as she has always been.
As these romances go, they never last. The young man turns out to be engaged to someone.
Tess of the D’Urbervilles: this is the summer landscape which engulfs Tess and Angel Clare, and finally leads to despair of such magnitude. Only the genius of Thomas Hardy could imagine it in the changing seasons.
And then, there’s my favorite — Chekhov’s The Lady with the Dog. The Lady and the Man are both married. They meet one summer and the romance flows along on a pitiless tide, without any other possible ending except misery.
In spite of the meadows, and the picnics under the shade of copper beech tree, the days will be staged again next summer — with other lovers in other places.
The freedom of endless summers remain in our memory like the summers of our childhood .
Summer is a high, candid, definite time. Beware of summer romance.
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