High Summer

The sky is blue and my vegetable gardens are lush jungles (no Martha Stewart gardener, I, my tomatoes get planted so close together that no weeding is necessary-the vines shade out the soil.). The blackberry brambles are full of fruit. This year, we have had a family of catbirds and a flock of sparrows take up residence in the yard, along with the usual cardinals, blue jays and robins. The rabbit is back (and yes, it is a fiercebunny!) Everywhere you look, there are signs of life. And yet…the air is still, heavy, hot. Away from the community beach, it is very quiet. This time of year doesn't feel like “life” to me, it feels like…stasis. It feels like winter, if winter were hot, instead of cold.

This could have something to do with my Jewish upbringing, when the Autumnal Equinox heralded the coming new year. Or, it could be that being the child of parents who pursued their higher education goals, even as I was starting school, September seemed full of new books, new clothes and excitement. Or, maybe it has to do with my psycho/spiritual “cell memory,” hearkening back to the Mid-East, to Mesopotamia, to Canaan, to Egypt, where summer, with its fierce sun and lack of rain was the season of death.
My pensiveness is most likely amplified by a traumatic, but in the end, miraculous event of earlier this week, but that isn't where it originates. This is the time of the conserving of energy, for the activity that will come. It is the Alef, the intake of breath, before B’rasheit, when it all starts again.