Shall We Agree That Just This Once

Although the skies are heavy and dark today, the air is only lightness and warmth. I am barefoot in a floaty spring skirt (yes, on 'casual Friday'), impatient, ever impatient for summer. So close I can almost taste, teasing, lingering, on my tongue, just for today. Summer: the only time of year that really matters to me. I said last night (as I do again, and again, and again), that I still dream of a place that is filled with endless summer. I love the metaphorical possibilities of this time of year, the hopeful promise and possibility for changing what one once was into something else entirely. Longing for the perennial shedding of myself, both literal and emotional, the casting aside of everything that binds, contains, and no longer belongs in and of my world. The boundless, faithful leap into the comforting unknown. In my mind, that unknown is always a day like the summer Solstice, a day of perfect balance and light. A memory: some useless French lit class, Bloomington, Ballantine Hall, Spring, 1991. In a sudden fit and without warning, winter disappears almost instantly. I make the mistake of making my seat by the open window, can see people playing Frisbee with dogs many floors below in the grassy area where Brother Jed sometimes proselytizes when the weather is nice. I wonder where he is today. The air is truly intoxicating and I feel too dizzy and lightheaded to decipher the Passe Simple. I pass Mark E. a note, telling him that I am going to forcibly make him skip our fiction writing workshop to keep me company on the thick, green grass of Dunn Meadow. Today though, memory dissipates into the air, begins the only negative part of this process. For the next two months, I will find myself feeling constantly like I'm falling, dizzy again, unable to concentrate until I can say with certainty that I am ready to begin. I could almost swear the magnolia tree's buds grow larger every day now.