summertime & the livin's easy

bike in color
Originally uploaded by kyra leseberg

summertime seems to demand awe & respect.
as a little girl, summer was brown freckled shoulders, mosquito bites, bicycles on busted asphalt, drinking Kool-Aid out of mason jars, dandelions, & jelly shoes from K-Mart. i remember spinning around in our tiny yard with a sparkler, hearing this hiss of the sparks & the smell after it burned out. i remember the taste of salt from a mix of ocean & sweat. but mostly i remember every summer getting to travel to new lands (my imagination as a little girl turned a 2 hour road trip to the beach into a mythical kerouac-esque adventure).
as a teenager, summer became a love-battered season. i read paperbacks that i'd highlight passages in & quote in conversations. i listened to mix tapes/cds with friends before the sun came up. every summer had a soundtrack & every day was summed up in the confines of a notebook page - sometimes 3 or 4 pages - depending on the adventure of the day.
every day was brand new & exciting; a race to see//smell//taste//hear//feel every experience possible before the season was over. i could pretend to be 8 feet tall watching my shadow grow longer on sidewalks. i fell in love with people, places, books, & photos. i remember taking polaroids & tucking them in the pages of my journal, where i wrote conversations i had with people & described the places we roamed: mount helicon (before they turned it into a soap shop), & the condemned gym where we'd dance on the rotting basketball court that had floor to ceiling windows like some grunge ballroom.
i made airwaves out the car window & listened to bands i'd just discovered. i remember the long languid walks up steep steps to a hole in the wall record shop looking for vintage classic rock but never finding any worth buying.
most of all, summer was dreaming. it was imagining what life would be like when i was 'free' - when i was an adult. there was a hunger & determination to stay the same person: always awe-struck by the sublime, writing things i never wanted to forget in a square notebook, clicking the shutter to capture people & places i love(d)...
but there was always the dream - & thrill - of wondering who i'd become; where i'd be in 3 summers, 4 summers...
it's because of that teasing, enchanting spell of summer that i measure my life by the season & still celebrate the infinite.
-summer is remembrance.