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June 20, 2004
Summer Solstice
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2003
The apex of the Year is here. Where the Sun stops, to take the word solstice literally. Stops and turns back, sinking southward, the days growing shorter once more, the window of illumination contracting. Of course it’s the movement of the Earth that causes this impression, but that’s astronomy; here on the surface we are subject to perceptual illusions. But it takes months for the gathering Spring to warm the hibernating Earth, and having grown hot it will take even longer to cool off. The pace of the change hastens most around the equinoxes, and it won’t be until we approach the Fall that we really sense the failing of the light and feel the coolness of gathering shadow. For the moment we have the long days to look forward to; the season of the stopped Sun, hovering above us in all its terrible beneficence.
It’s already been hot.
Not that I’m complaining; it beats last year’s ceaseless precipitation, but get over one thing and there’s another waiting. The summery pattern of heat, humidity and thunder started to emerge before the end of May this year, reminding us once more of the specter of global warming. But Summer remains the populist season; few will wish the Sun to stay stopped at the bottom of the cycle, when the Winter Solstice wraps a long night around us.
As I noted in 2002, Summer is the time for taking time off, but now I’m overworked through not working. Trying to put more effort into looking for work that I need more than I want, not to mention scrambling to meet a double-holiday deadline has me sweating almost as much as the heat.
Looking back, I see that we’ve finished another cycle in the time I’ve been writing this page. Four years have passed, bringing once more the heavily freighted year with the extra day, as well as the presidential election and the Olympics. Just as in 2000, Leap Year forces the Solstice from the twenty-first to the twentieth, but that year Fathers’ Day was earlier, leaving me time to smell the flowers, sweet and stinky as they were. This year the twentieth is also the third Sunday, resulting in this logjam.
It doesn’t really matter.
In Summer nothing seems to matter much. Games are only games, and we’ll wait for Autumn to really get worked up about politics again. It would be nice if the candidates would take the season off as well.
No, I’ve never bothered to write exhaustively on the Solstice, having other causes for exhaustion. I touched on boundaries, seasonal and otherwise, in 2001 (a post that now requires an update), and last year’s little poem at least acknowledged the gathering storm, but mostly Summer is invitation and acquiescence, rolled together into inaction. Or no more action than rolling over, front to back, so as not to burn.
Well, we may all burn one day, and soon, if the weather keeps going like this, or if we don’t change our wicked ways. But right now I’m beached, even here in the city: Summer-struck, and too lazy to care.
Somebody pour me a drink.