The Last Dance of Summer 2011

I don't think I will ever grow out of it.


Every time the first week of August rolls around I get an overwhelming sense that Summer is dying.

Summer doesn't just fade like other seasons, it always has to go out like a long drawn out aching funeral procession. May was just yesterday and yet here I am viewing Summer like a old rusted kaleidoscope of memories, paying respect to the memory of another Summer in the books.

I find myself wanting to write about it. Yet it feels like a whirlpool of pointless emotions. I want to grasp at some closure just like when a real entity dies but I'm not sure what (if any) such thing as Summer closure exists.

I once saw a cartoon about the last days of Summer. The character found himself in a similar situation, trying to come to grips with the passing of the great season. With the help of his mother he gathered up all his summer memories and went on a nostalgic mental magic carpet ride through the Summer's activities all to come to a grand realization that it was a great summer and things were accomplished.

I could ride the same mental magic carpet and come to the same realization. It was a good Summer. I accomplished many of the things I sought to do. Yet I'm still stuck feeling like it happened so fast and now the only thing left is the cold hard final days when Summer is more like a patient on a deathbed, it exists in reality but outcome is finite, and everyone knows what is going to happen, except in this case, nobody is sensitive. It's like the final weeks don't count, they are only a stopgap between real Summer and school being back.

Part of me is excited to go back, and yet the other part of me feels like I'm dropping off a bridge named uncertainty.Finding out what the future brings seems so paramount to bringing my soul back to equilibrium, yet once again I'm stuck doing this last dance routine with Summer. Summer is the perfect dance partner too because the routine is always the same.

And maybe that's what makes the last dance / funeral procession so hard to passively accept. The end of summer is the end of the comfort of routine. August is the last call for a final drink of the blissful cocktail of certainty that defines the season.

For those who don't know the ending of this discomforting "last dance", the spoiler is that the funeral procession is actually roller-coaster nearing it's peak. It's not going to be the same after the drop but it will probably be a lot of fun.

Here's to a final dance with Summer, and the rush of a new school year.




Sam