Instead, I'll tell you about a book.
I went to the library to return my horrific load of Freud's works that I never finished because of the advent of The Unfortunate Internship (I've finally settled on a name for it). As is what typically happens when I go to the library for any reason at all, I ended up taking a book home with me. I've read this book before, many times, in fact, but I've been stuck in a bit of a rut recently, and I guess I thought a re-read might help me out. So I skimmed the recently disorganized shelves, flying past the A's to the B's, slowing down until I reached the very end of the row. There. Top shelf. The familiar faded spine. I stuck a finger in behind the hard cover, pulling it down off the shelf and tucking it under my arm without checking the title. The weight and shape were familiar in my hand.
Sometimes I wonder why I've never bothered to buy this book. I've read it nearly every year, and every time I do so, I make the short trek to the library and poke about amongst the shelves for that familiar face. There must be something said about the journey and the expected discovery.
While sitting in the car on the way to the barber's, I stared at the front cover of my book where the vivid peaches and creams had begun to fade to plain orange and beige. Will this still mean anything to me? I wondered. I hoped it would. I really hoped it would.
And so I sat down at my desk this evening just as the heat began to fade from the day, the sun no more than a bold shadow on the neighbor's roof. Opening my window, I let the warm breeze filter through the silence, work its way through the thrum of a hundred thousand cars a stone's throw away, and settle somewhere deep in the cherry wood of my desk, the synthetic cushions of my office chair, imbuing these lifeless objects with a freedom of their own.
I pulled open the cover and meandered through the crinkled yellow pages to the words I thought I'd forgotten but remembered so well.
It was a quiet morning, the town covered over with darkness and at ease in bed. Summer gathered in the weather, the wind had the proper touch, the breathing of the world was long and warm and slow. You had only to rise, lean from your window, and know that this indeed was the first real time of freedom and living, this was the first morning of summer.I guess my summer's finally begun.
