Summer is too hot

Summer is too hot, so I sit in my house, and go out at night instead.
I don't understand why anyone would want to go outside and exert themselves all day. You sweat while exerting yourself in room temperature, why push it?
So I stay inside and read. It doesn't create memories, but it keeps me in my comfort womb.
Today's novel was not about escaping, but about feeling it.
Thanks, Margaret Laurence. Rest where you are, you have done well, and receive the Beany Satisfactory Prize for Writing that I Will Revisit, 2004.
And reading in the summer, although not a new concept for me, reminds me of the first summer that I began reading rather than playing.


The last summer of my youth, I stopped watching movies in the afternoon or playing boardgames with my family, and instead read vampire novels. I read and read and read and read. I read, that is, betwixt visits from friends of mine- male, dark (in spirit), hardworking and enthralled with me. Anne Rice was my saviour that summer, as I craved being anywhere but where I was. The first summer that reading was a getaway-- to New Orleans, to France, to ancient Egypt-- anyhwhere where they creatures of the night roamed. I so wanted to be a vampire.

Nobody told me I had to appreciate my summers at the cottage (not that I would've listened). My brother was still building sandcastles, as I longed to be with boys who played songs for me, sent me bootleg tapes in the mail, came visiting to to play guitar in the sun, or make out with me at the end of the beach road.. This was the last summer of my single life. The last summer wandering around the beach as the "kids" there-- sheepishly trying to talk to the generation in their midtwenties, because they seemed cooler-- trying for a peek into the crystal ball of adulthood-- hoping for some common thread. Mostly that thread was beer or guitars. Those "adults" didn't want to talk about being an adult any more than we did.

When we go to my beach now, we awkwardly fit into the new 20something generation. Yet we haven't blessed the beach with a new breed of beach kids, we don't have cars to get us there, we somehow don't quite fit the mold. So it makes us laugh, my brother and I. And we know that this is the real world, and we would do anything to make it permanent. In or parents' wills, we've refused the house. We'd sell it for cash to stay at the cottage full time. What job could we keep to be able to be in Baie Verte all year round? Writing? Prostitution? Growing illegal drugs? Winning the lottery? Cabinetry? Or just shrugging off the world as much as possible and save cash for a few years. Or work for a few months, and make enough to pay off the property taxes.. And eat less because you live longer doing that anyway.. and maybe live our dreams by kicking the people off the beach who make it a hateful place to live-- the gay bashers, the party poopers, the hypocritical Christians. We'd even keep a handful of seniors-- because they're amused by us. And we could learn from them.. There is, in my life, a paucity of wise elders. I could learn from them by actually listening. I have that knowledge now. When I was young, it was common practice for me to not believe adults when they tried to offer me a life lesson. Whatever. Maybe it they had been a little more liberal in their youth so it would be more realistic. I might've listened. Probably not.

The last summer of my youth, the last one before "going steady" and getting my first job, and thinking too hard about university, while not having the slightest idea what it might be like. Forming ideas about others, mocking their stupidity, their mispronunciation of words, thinking I was smarter than so many others. Wishing I were dead, but conversly being more alive then I would ever know. My last real chance as I would let myself see it. The most romantic kiss I have seen to this day. The hottest time to love and be loved-. My first (or hardest) glimpse of unrequited love or really love that we chose not to reciprocate. We chose hurting ourselves instead. That summer I still wrote poetry, yet had never gotten high.
The last summer of my youth, I hung out out with my best friend, but we were really growing apart. I was moving away from conventional mores, and it was difficult for her. And her father woudn't let her hang with my radical longhaired friends. The last summer of baking cakes that would be eaten in laughter, the last summer of swinging on the swings and bounching on innertubes, of walking up the road late at night to discuss crushes, reading choose your-own adventure books outloud; or each other's journals, or planning the wedding she would have and I wouldn't, of botched bikini line waxing, and watching old tapes of the Smurfs. It was the last summer that I spent on Mason's Beach, and I wish I had paid more attention.

It was, the first summer that the tide began to speak to me, though, and the salt water became theraputic. The first time that I started valuing time alone, time to write and explore and consider growing up. But lucikly, I wasn't frightgened by it. And I had confidence. But I couldn't just live in the moment anymore-- it was truly the last summer for that.