High on Happiness

Posts Tagged ‘summer’

Oh, July!  Must you go so soon?  You, with the lush, full summer in your arms?  You, with long days full of sunlight and thunder?  Must you go?

What carefree hours you gave us, painting the illusion that we, and you, would stretch on forever.  We spent whole days of leisure celebrating your song.

And my, how the children loved you!  How they played!  You spent them completely, sending them home with faces caked with dust, their sleepy eyes gleaming and wanting more.

And we played, too, every chance we got, with all the loved ones we could gather around us.  We stretched out on your beaches and lawns.  We bathed in your oceans and rain.  We watched your fireflies dance in the treetops like stars.  We pretended we were young again, and those who were young believed they would be so always.

You etched fine memories on our hearts, July.     You made the mad world stand still for a while and we believed all time was ours and that we would go on forever.

There’s nothing shy about summer, no sir.  Summer is serious fervor, man.  She’s giving it all she’s got, pouring it on.  There’s no half way for her.

She’s pumping out the juice, turning up the color, playing her jazz with a downright holy zeal.  She’s blazing her heat and rolling her thunder and there’s absolutely nowhere you can hide.

She’s all about life, spitting it out, raising it to fullness, seeing that it carries on.  Even her dreamy days are lush and rich with passion.  They catch you in their spell and just won’t let you go.

She’ll test your metal, brother, see what kind of stamina you’ve got.  You have to be worthy, you know, to take that kind of loving.

Every moment, every hour has its beauty.  Every season unfolds with its own unique pleasures and delights.  But today I found myself falling in love all over again with summer’s color and burgeoning life.

Yes, its temperatures sometimes climb to uncomfortable extremes; but so do winter’s.  And spring and autumn have their wild sides, too.  We live in a world of contrasts, one extreme testing us, the other bringing joy.

And today I drank in summer’s beauty.  I feasted on her mild side and it tasted like perfection.  The sky wore billowing clouds that cast great swaths of rolling shadow across the landscape.  The roadsides and fields were decked with wildflowers.  The air carried the symphony of insect hum  and birdsong.  And everywhere, a heady, changing perfume floated—of hay, of grass, of pavement, of pond.

How alive it all was!  How dynamic!  And how seamless was the web of life breathing through it all, orchestrating it, integrating it, and calling each piece of it to fruition.

Its seamlessness stretched behind it to spring, and ahead to autumn and to winter.  It was all an endlessly transforming spiral, a dance of the life force through this wondrous confluence of time and space that emerges as planet Earth.

And here we are, a part of the great web, gifted with the capacity to sense that it lies beneath and within all that we perceive, animating it, supporting it, endlessly transforming it in its infinite, inexhaustible play.

And look!  The crickets are masterpieces.  The wildflowers are jewels.  The scents, floating on the summer air, are pungent and fresh and perfumed.  The breeze dances in my hair.  The sun caresses my skin.  In the pond, a bullfrog croaks and I erupt in laughter as little tears of joy well up in my eyes for the precious gift of being alive, and awake, and savoring beautiful summer.

The velvet air brushing against skin cells, breezing through every strand of hair, kissing eyelids.  The thick, sweet nectar of sun-warmed apricots as their flesh gives way beneath your teeth.  The rustle of papery leaves, the sparkle of morning dew.  Gather these.

The dawn’s salmon sun, leaping through pastel clouds.  The glitter of fireflies.  The glint of fishes sliding through a cool silk pool. Take these home with you.

The tinkle of ice cubes in a tall glass of tea; the sizzle of dinner on the grill.  The blanket of stars and the sailing of the moon.  The fragrance of a newly mown lawn, of hay, of clover and roses.  The endless, streaming green of it all, and gardens punctuating the landscape with color.  These are for you.

The air so thick it rises in visible waves from the pavement; the way buildings seem to heave in the heat.  The call of the sandy beaches and laughing waves and basting bodies.  The symphony of birdsong: doves, swifts, robins, tanagers, larks, swallows, gulls.  Paste these in your memory; let them weave into your dreams.

Gather it; drink it.  Let it flow unbridled through every sensuous organ that you possess.  Let it envelope and saturate you.  Feel the lushness of every nuance of color and texture and sound and taste and perfume.  These are the glory days; the seasons’ crown, a gift from the tilting, whirling globe, come to open you and set you free.

“Summer afternoon, summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.” ~Henry James

Oh, the leisure of it!  And the loveliness!  At long last, summer is here.

“Summer is the time,” said Ada Huxtable, “when one sheds one’s tensions with one’s clothes, and the right kind of day is jeweled balm for the battered spirit.  A few of those days and you can become drunk with the belief that all’s right with the world.”

If I could wish a wish for you, it would be that you do indeed become absolutely intoxicated with the belief that all is right with world—and never recover from the notion.

Happy Summer, my friends.  May it live forever in your hearts.

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