The air outside is still, and the lake below our wandering feet is as still as glass. A creaking wooden jetty nearby seems to float in twilight. The water reflects trees and stones and swimming birds and all the happenings along its shores like a mirror - this summer for sure and perhaps all the summers that have come and gone in this liminal and enchanting place since it came to be in the great wide world.
We spend as many hours as we can near the lake, but what does one do on summer evenings when the air outside is shimmery with heat, and the lake is far away, but lapping gently at our thoughts?
Hoping to see summer stars, we leave draperies open to let in the night, and we light a beeswax candle (just a small votive because of the heat) to the gods and goddesses of this golden interval - they are harvest deities one and all. We make a pot of Darjeeling or Assam and put on a little night music (Mozart of course), then pull out a good book and revisit the sunny seasons of other times and other places.
I have been reading (again and for the nth time) Michael Chabon's enchanting Summerland and Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) fills the air with music that is airy and graceful. Roger Norrington's recording is the perfect music for summer nights, and Chabon stirs up a heady magical brew in which baseball, fairies, Old Man Coyote and mythology go together perfectly. Tofu hot dog anyone, iced tea, lemonade, cotton candy? A trip to the ball park or an outdoor concert? Calliope?
1 comment:
In the chaos of my life these days it is so pleasurable to visit your calm and serene place, to take a deep breath and then sigh with the ease of knowing the world continues to turn at its own pace no matter how fast I am dancing.
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