THE SUMMERTIME BLUES

It’s almost July, heat is on its way and I most definitely have the early stages of the summertime blues which includes the somewhat hypnotic side effect of adding the names of song titles to sentences.   The treatment for that is pure mountain spring logic which is exactly what I’m going to approach now.

My most embedded compass always points me in one direction: home.

When we are home, we want to leave and when we leave all we want to do is go home.  That kind of push/pull mentality can drive a person crazy on any given day.

Luckily we all carry a mall’s worth of itty bitty movie theaters in our heads that offer feature quality moments of both our quickly fading and barely reachable past.

Slowly lower your eyes lids like a royal curtsy and just like that, a lifetime of silent images will begin to project onto them.  Sometimes the soundtrack comes first.  A song will suddenly appear on the radio or in the aisle of CVS and they do double duty as they become the flashlight carrying ushers who will show you to your seat of knowledge.

The truth is we are not just the featured players of our own memory movies.  We are also the editors and directors too.   The movies we see, just like our lives, never seem to be finished or fully satisfying.   Sometimes it takes years to notice the mistakes.  The bad performances.  The lack of truth.  The cheap laughs. The cruel jokes at someone’s expense.

That’s when the Yes I Canne judges, who know exactly who and what to reward, step in and offer prizes to those who are most deserving, which, on occasion is you.

It is not surprising to me how addicted we are to real movies, especially during the summer months, where most films have the sound and weight of your typical Hiroshima bomb.  Subtly is simply not a poolside activity.

When life becomes too hard and even the thought of conjuring up a highlight reel of days past seems way too much, that is when we seem to have this insatiable urge to escape into the man-made versions.

For the most part, the fare that is being offered is meant for the average 12-year-old monkey, so thank God for art houses like my local Jacob Burns Theater which attracts grown-ups like lepers to Lourdes.

It’s a place where most of our spirits are rekindled like memorial candles while the older versions of us sleep like tucked open mouthed babies who are just learning the true art of snoring.

Books of the summer rarely have any weight or import. It’s like they are all printed on paper made of feathery down that diverts our gaze from the rolling ocean and back again.  Music becomes less assaultive and more soothing and romantic.

And yet there is always the sun to be dealt with, which often makes me feel like I’m rowing not he slave ship while it whips the hell out of me.

Air conditioning, which is the single greatest invention since Carvel,  is my go-to zen place.  I usually park myself inches from its faceplate and I sit there until I resemble a package of Birdseye frozen peas.

On any given July or August day my energy is on the same level as my pyramid building ancestors.  Even the thought of building the sandcastle variety seems like an impossible and exhausting task.

Have you noticed that I have not mentioned politics?  Well, that is because I have a point to prove.

From now through September, I think we all need a nice long vacation from it.

If you want to fall off the wagon the bars of MSNBC and CNN are open 24/7 as are the jungle fever crack buildings of FOX.  American can always get its cheap high.

For those who have hard time getting off of the news, let me summarize the next three months:  Trump will insult dozens if not hundreds of people, he will lie endlessly, he will hold one self-congratulatory Nazi youth rally after another, the Mueller investigation will become a tighter and tighter noose around his neck, the GOP will do terrible things to Social Security and Medicare, at least two famous people will die, there will be hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, Morning Joe will not let his wife speak,  Rachel Maddow will throw up her hands in bewilderment as her paper notes go flying, Ari Melber will quote yet another rap song which will make him appear even whiter.

And scene.

And now you are free to drift, float and drink until you have at least a dozen tiny umbrellas littering the sand around you like fallen parachutes.

Meat can now be grilled by OCD barbecue dads,  dogs can chase butterflies and beams of shifting sunlight, sprinklers, open hydrants and public pools can their wet arms to all the children of the world and best of all you can live on a need to nap basis.

This is because time becomes relatively meaningless during the summer months.  

And that is because time only haunts us when we focus exclusively on it.   We can obsess so much on it, that for the most part, we don’t even see ourselves age until we finally look at the mirror and faint when all we see is Aunt Gertie or Uncle Hy.

The relentless stormtroopers of time are nothing short of a countdown towards THE end which we think about ALL the time on a very deep, subconscious level, especially as we age and our myriad of aches and pain turn us all into Timex watches.  Despite the discomfort, we take a licking and keep on ticking.

So I implore all of you to take a well-earned break from the everyday savagery of every day life.  It will all still be there when you return.  I promise you that.

The reality is we are all powerless as one.   But come November, that is when you have my permission to stop being a hiber-nation and actually become proactive and do what all the bullet-ridden corpses of young innocent children will never be able to do:  

Vote.

That is worth waking up for.