presaged the easy time of summer for our ancestors who survived winter, and for other ancients, the late summer sun was the last they'd ever see.
the sun is coming back! I know it did its graceful pirouette on December 22, the winter solstice, at the end of its long stately march into the Southern Hemisphere, but the light had not then changed. Then, the sun only turned and stood for a moment in space, unmoving in its relation to us. Now, it has made clear its intention to return by beginning its procession back. Its light appears to me now happier, more hopeful than the yellow-orange light of fading summer.
With giddy anticipation, we wait for our lover to be upon us once again.
I wonder if I actually can see through my kitchen window the red- and blue-shifts in light which describe the motions of celestial bodies. I believe I have detected a subtle change in the sun's light today, a change which astronomers measure in angströms and I measure in emotions. Through a vast swath of time, humans have seen it come and seen it go and so the significance of this solar change of heart has been recorded in our genes. The beginning of the sun's slow return
presaged the easy time of summer for our ancestors who survived winter, and for other ancients, the late summer sun was the last they'd ever see.
In 2000, we don't die when winter's darkness comes but we feel in our depressions the echo of predecessors who did. As my depression stirs and seems near to waking from its heavy hibernation on top of me, so stirs my memories of summer; crowded beaches and the mingled scents of suntan lotion and sea, club scenes in Ptown amid lightly-draped hunks with tans so dark their lips look white, and beautiful youth everywhere dressed in the minimum allowed--with sunglasses.
Bright breezy days and soft warm nights will soon enough arrive, and we will enjoy them amid suspicions that life might be this good. I'm even sure some of us, even though we need more than a brief summer season, will begin to bud and even bloom. We know there isn't time, but we will take a lover--maybe two--just before summer gives-up the fight, right about the time we notice there has been a change in the color of the light.
summer now lies between me and next Fall, so I will prepare during these ample nights to rightly receive the warm season's joys. However, I fear profoundly that summer will overwhelm me again, as in seasons past. When that happens, I dare to feel only a fraction of summer's passion, and I put a cool distance between myself and each warm gorgeous moment. Mercifully, summers past have walked on by, and sauntered down the avenue out of sight. But if this summer comes for me--and I sorely hope it will--I will not survive. Everything I've known myself to be will dissappear, and I have no fucking idea what's going to be there in its place. Anything--even nothing--is better than letting it slip away one more time. This is agony. This is rebirth. This is a reversal of the seasons as I have always known them.
There has been a change in the color of daylight which marks the beginning of the sun's return. This time, it comes for me.
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