It's the summer of the wine cooler, of hiding something in a way that someone specific will find it, and the summer of keeping a secret that you will carry to your grave. It's the summer of the dead wrestler and his dead family, and the summer that you stopped watching wrestling, and that we finally lost the rest of our childlike innocence, and that we found other childlike innocence, and the summer that we stopped and started talking, and that the heat rose from the street and straight up my trousers and took us all a little closer to the stars when it was night, and the clouds when it was day. It's the summer of the homeless woman on a pre-paid roundtrip to Chicago, and the summer in which the Cubs may make it to the post-season, and the summer of baseball in general, and the summer in which I will gain and lose 20 pounds. It's the summer in which the dreams will not stop, painting dreams, and fluorescent light tube dreams, and dreams of a conspiracy of women, and of multi-million dollar contracts. It's the summer of the hyphen, and the end of history. It's the summer of rapture, and rapturous living, and dangerous life, and winning when you didn't even try. It's the summer of saying goodbye. It's the summer of the witness, and death penalty, and heart sinking, and rising, and sinking, and rising. It's the summer of cordial women, and turning Muslim, and wanting more, and being Zen, and indie rock, and Canada. It's the summer that Rick Bass began, the summer of the run-on sentence, the summer that makes no more sense than last season, the summer in which this city will eat your little cooked body, the summer when your body was cooked. It's the summer of ladies in 70's hair styles, and the summer of shave pubis, the summer of clutter, and repetition, and repetition, and saying the same thing over, but refusing to live it over, and over, and over, and refusing to live it. It's the summer of living, forgetting that thoraxic schism,and it's the summer of walking away, eating this city, and never looking back.
July 2007 Archives
So this is the real summer in this city. There is not the solitude that allows for the solitude. That allows for introspection every night. There's the crazy summerness of the Southern existence, like Carson McCullers, Flannery O'Conner, and other crazy heat-stricken ladies with various talents.
I have spent the night praying to clothing and the lack of and the way that clothing makes certain things and can ruin others. This is the nature of the city. Nothing is laid bare, nothing is truthful on the surface. Everything takes an extra level of interpretation.
In Summer, in this place, things turn rotten. Corpses rise from the depths of bodies of water and surface and create a narrative that will change this city a little for a few moments.
Desire overcomes us boys in the city at this time of the year, and we know not where to aim our compasses. There's nothing that pulls completely. There's just the Summer. There's just the crazy lumpy ladies. There's just desire. And it burns hotter than summer. It burns hotter than expectation. It gets under your skin and we'll take your mind away from all that you need to get done in this pre-Independence Day heat.
Play a Sousa tune and light a Roman candle. Tonight is lonely and secure and will come to be a good memory for me if I allow myself to wait.
