It’s hard to believe that it’s already late July, which means:
1. My birthday is just around the corner.
2. I have no more excuses not to tackle my summer reading, all 120 books.
3. Summer is nearly half over, even by the standards of the quarter system on which I live.
4. My birthday is almost here.
For as frequently as I comment on the ever-more-rapid passage of time and consider it an adult phenomenon, perhaps there is no other season that more intensely evokes my childhood and reminds me that this experience is nothing new (see items 1 and 4 above for proof of my perpetual youth). Not that I didn’t enjoy the school year (see my current profession), but there was nothing quite like endless days spent at the Laurelhurst Beach Club or the Viewridge snack bar/pool. From the gummy worms at the latter to the frozen high fructose corn syrup served up by Popsicle Joe in his idiosyncratic white Jeep, summer has always been tinged with the sugary sweetness of sunshine, free time, and seemingly boundless expanses of water (there was a time when swimming my 1s - aka 100 yards - at the Beach Club was an impressive accomplishment. I was six years old and under three feet tall; by those measurements, Lake Washington might as well have been the Pacific Ocean, albeit a cleaner, unsalty version).
These days, the experience of boundlessness attaches to the quantity of reading before me, though this literary ocean is no less exciting and terrifying than Lake Washington’s unfathomable depths were back in 1988. The sunshine’s been coming and going here in Los Angeles, and the free time is unequivocally a thing of the past, but the sugary sweetness of a summer birthday awaits. On today’s to-do list: write up Derrida and “The Yellow Wall-Paper;” book my flight to the Bay for next month; and, last but certainly not least, settle on which chocolate cake to order for next Friday. I wonder if the bar would let me bring a pinata, too…
PS. I’m in the process of taking down or updating the links to my articles. If you find one that’s broken, please let me know!