Sweet Summer Solstice Balances Life's Bitterness

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

by James Carroll

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0612-25.htm

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Drawing your gaze through the window again, the blue sky comes into view -- the heavenly field of cosmic play within which seasons have their meaning. The physical fact that revolutions of the globe around the sun combine with earth's axial rotations creates the ultimate abstraction, which is the simple bliss of outdoor leisure after dinner. Perceptions of the actual spheres and their swirling, from Capricorn to Cancer, elude you. Instead, memory and anticipation take over, free associations of the endless evenings of this special week: friends stopping by, gin-and-tonics on the porch, laughing parents, you and your brothers dashing after the ice cream man, your own children chasing fireflies, the hum of the Red Sox game from windows down the street, every neighborhood you have ever lived in settling into the contentment for which these long days were made. The past and the future kiss...

<snip>

There is no coping with the heartbreak of the human condition without a nurtured sense of the heart when it is full. It is the business of the summer solstice, through the weave of memory and desire, to nurture that plenitude. That is why, on each day of its approach, you will note the rampant timelessness of evening. In the morning, you will let your eyes drift from the wartime news to the red-breasted bird on the window ledge, to join in its watching.