Midsommar Clouds

This sudden heat spike, today, accompanied by high pitched cicada chirping and low clouded sky, is towering confusion: isn’t summer coming to an end?

Or is it me, experiencing, this manufactured closure: the ending of things, people, shared memories, lived moments?

Everyone is leaving: Jamaica, London, Cairo, Somali, Santiago, Amsterdam, Jakarta, NYC, KL, HK, Manilla, Calgary, SF, Zurich…

Departure is always abrupt no matter how much you prepare for it. Closure is always disorienting, like that first sunlight hitting you when you walk out of a movie theater, back to reality, or is it back to another film?

Do you return to “a” or “the” town? Do you return to “a” or “the” life?

Do you return to the same chapter but a different paragraph? Or a different chapter or a different book altogether?

And do you return to yourself?

I think of Georgia O’keeffe’s clouds, above the sky, where air is still, and life is quiet, where silence is the commander of words, and when she said: “I have done nothing all summer but wait for myself to be myself again.”