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Some wisdom must be fiercely sought after, much wisdom evades, and still some slowly reveals itself with age and yet is difficult to preserve.
Our connectivity to the environment, is a wisdom that has gradually settled into my own understanding. I used to image myself an actress. The spotlight of my imagination shining brightly upon my own experience. I thought all else to be simply the backdrop to my stardom, in the production of my life. Through the naive lens of my childhood, I thought even the sun and moon to be secondary characters. But in time, the world has revealed a better knowing.
When I was young and the heat would bloom, school let out, every summer felt new. The possibilities for change in the same of everyday would stretch ahead of me, endlessly. There was an infinity to summer. And each firefly night was expectant with potential. In adulthood, that curiosity gave way to scarcity.
Coupled with the coming to life of spring’s introduction and the looming threat of winter disguised as fall, I now notice a change in and around me in summertime. In fact, there is a plurality to summer’s potential. Two ways of being that seem to connect us to time revealed in season, a cadence we can be caught up in without even knowing.
When I was young, I did not notice the way the humidity cradled me in my sleeping-in summer mornings. The sunshine’s intermingling with my laughter, went overlooked. Now, time has fashioned patterns that only age reveals and I know, that summer can create in me an ease unmatched.
Yet, there is another self in summer that becomes seemingly more socially acceptable in adulthood. With the heat grows in me a scarcity that I once evaded. Planted by a culture crippled with sexualized racism, suddenly as Black + Brown women
We achieve in the summertime
We entertain in the summertime
We perform in the summertime
We ignore the sweltering sorrow of last summertime
We are hyperactive with a thirst for productivity unquenchable in the summertime
The wisdom of summer ease swiftly slips from my knowing. The patterns of nature, on this side of the globe, has convinced me that time is too fleeting. This change in season changes a pace within me.
But in seeking the preservation of this wisdom – that the season blooms around and within me, that ease or frenzy is mine to choose – I will weed out the hostile lies that threaten to choke the ease of life. I will resist the pestering sense of self that questions my deservedness of sweet seasonal gifts.
