filled was the air with a dreamy and magical light...

i walk without flinching through the burning cathedral of the summer. my bank of wild grass is majestic and full of music. it is a fire that solitude presses against my lips.
~violette leduc, mad in pursuit

yesterday i mourned the last day of my first summer vacation in what feels like eternity- it is really closer to 6 years. i felt the weight of the day- sadness mixed with uncertainty- pressing upon my insides like that feeling you get when you know you and your love are through. anticipation is the criminal: he starts cutting the threads one by one as soon as the sticky nights turn to chill and you curl the blanket into fists around your ears for the first time. it's been like that for over a week now, with little flirts of july stuck in for good measure- just to churn up nostalgia for the heck of it.

nostalgia is anticipation's sidekick. kundera (kindred, he and i) speaks of nostalgia in the most relateable way- "you can suffer nostalgia in the presence of the beloved if you glimpse a future where the beloved is no more." homesickness. a wistful desire to return. that is where my heart lies, like dirty dishes on the table after the most indulgent meal. dessert is a flickering candle of hazy doubt i'm too full to nibble upon.

i'm doubtful of this new path i'm on. the big, huge, canyon-sized leap i've take towards "my future" is so scary that i feel lost. there are too many forks in the road now, so many what ifs that i'm on the edge of my seat but shielding my eyes at the same time. imagine one of those "choose your own adventure" books- only for adults- where real consequence or exhilaration is just one decision, one turn of the page away. how arresting! and truely, how unlike me. i play it safe, i'm responsible, i'm realistic- rational even.

but so what? who cares? i've made it this far and i realized i was miserable playing by those rules. didn't i say that anticipation and nostalgia are partners in crime? they are, despite their conflicts. they seem in opposition but that's their game: one dragging you backward while the other tears forward. they're corporal punishment, those two: we're always strung up between their horses.

i want to remember this summer always as one that set me free. all the bad, the broken, the lost burnt in a wildfire that i didn't set aflame but from whose ash...