Summer Blues

I have a summer in my memory when we all stayed home. Drank beer. Fought off the cock roaches while we talked late into the night. But it's been several years now since summer has become a time when our paths all diverge. Our BS'ers are spread far and wide right now: Haiti, Pennsylvania, Nebraska and of coarse, some of us remain in the smoldering city- standing watch for the monsoons.

I've been reading Gerald May's essay on Space- on the emptiness within us. I wish I had read this my last year of graduate school, or even after when teaching adjunct and working in my studio still made my life feel full and buzzing. Now, I spend way to much of my time in Ken Wilbur's "interior I" quadrant. I feel too much space in my life. It makes me feel unimportant. May talks about our addiction to productivity. I've always thought of it as necessary distraction at worst, at best- a living example of Wendell Berry's thought that people need productive work. But lately I am realizing that a cluttered inbox, a day that rushes past, a never ending to do list- all helped give me a sense of worth.

Now that I am done teaching art camp for the summer my time feels vacuous. Without perimeters. I find a tendency to fight this free fall with a list of distractions (and give in: The Hunger games trilogy, thank God Albuquerque still has a dollar theatre!, who is up for some games?). May suggests something else. Falling into the space. Feeling the emptiness. He also makes several references to having a drink.

So on that note- do we have quorum? I am counting 5 of us in town. Sunday? I'll bring beer.