Summer Teeth

I am so far behind telling these stories I am giving up and skipping a few things in the interest of catching up.

I spent most of the summer unable to write. Or unable to write what I wanted to write. Unwilling perhaps? I’m not sure, all I know is I didn’t do anything I had planned to do when we got here. Like most people I imagine, I was in a bit of a funk most of the summer.

Opportunities were all around, but I just sat back and listened to the whooshing sound they made as they flew past me.

Despite having a chance to work on the bus without deadline or the inconvenience of living in it while tearing it up, I did absolutely nothing. I didn’t even wash it. I didn’t even go in it for months. The coronavirus situation provided me with a nice excuse to be lazy. If the world’s shut down anyway, what’s the point of doing anything?

Those bigger, longer writing projects I said I was going to work on? Nah, didn’t touch them. I squandered months. The most I managed to do was help Corrinne plant a few things in a small garden plot. But by mid summer I’d lost interest in that too. Corrinne kept at it though. We managed to get a good tomato harvest at least, along with one lonely, but pretty delicious, watermelon.

It was a strange summer. I think we were all longing for some beach time, some wide open stretches of sand and water instead of lawns and humidity. But even if there had been beaches open to go to, I’m not sure I’d have made the effort. Something in me was deeply in retrograde this summer. I couldn’t even bring myself to post things here. Normally I write things for luxagraf like I breathe, without thinking about it. Not this summer.

Maybe it was the heat, maybe it was the transit of the stars, maybe it was just me. Whatever the case, I did finally snap out of it and start doing the work that needs to be done (more on that later). But for those few months I, we, maybe the whole world to some degree, moved like a somnambulist.

That’s not to say we just lay around in daze. We got out and picked wild berries growing down the road. The kids rode their bikes, built wooden weapons, and explored the world around them as they always do. From their point of view, this summer was undoubtedly different, maybe a little boring, but they still had fun.

And lest you think I am so self-aware, let me be clear: I didn’t notice any of this as it happened. It wasn’t until the heat broke one day in early September that I suddenly sat up and thought wait, what the hell just happened? How is it September? Why am I not doing anything?

I don’t know for sure what it was that snapped me out of it, but I distinctly remember sitting on the porch, watching the kids reading in the hammock, and suddenly thinking what am I waiting for? Whatever it is, clearly it isn’t coming. I need to get going, now.

So I did. There is really no magic to writing. It’s like anything else you want to do, at some point you have to force yourself to sit in the chair and do it. Even when you don’t want to. Especially when you don’t want to. I forced myself into the chair and got to work. That effort cascaded. Start one project and it’s easier to start another. And another.

In some ways, though I look back on it mostly in disgust with myself for falling into a trap of my own thinking, my own lack of will, perhaps my summer malaise was necessary. Perhaps I needed to get the bottom of the barrel I’d been wallowing in for a while. Perhaps you never wake up until you have an uncomfortable collision with the ground beneath you.