Troglidition

After so much cloud and rain for so long, it seemed like the clear sun and blue sky were entirely anomalous. Honestly, it was a joy to spend as much time as possible outside, but I think it scorched my retinas. Now I'm back in the cave and it's dark and we're huddled around the fire, smoke blackening the vent hole in the rock above. I know I should be working on my wall paintings, but we all had a full day and I just don't feel like pounding pigments.

School's out now, of course, and tomorrow morning the job thingy will suck me back in and I'll immerse myself in washing kiddie furniture in the classrooms. It's not a bad way to spend time, although it's not a skilled sort of job. But a third grader can layer grime with astonishing thoroughness, and there's satisfaction to be got in removing it. Then teachers wander through and comment how nice and clean it smells. That would be my old buddy, 6.0% sodium hypochlorite. Conditioning is a marvelous thing. But we're all glad that the colds, flu, head lice and conjunctivitis have finally taken a long-overdue summer holiday. We hung on an extra week to make up for all the snow days this winter past. And now here we are, six months removed from the winter solstice.

Summer solstice doesn't charm me the way the other one does. It's a marker, to be sure. But this is a sort of bitter-sweet holiday for me. In my mind, after the summer solstice we start that long downhill plunge into darkness. The long days, the heat, the growing things -- all that I crave and dream about the whole winter long; at the summer solstice I begin to see it slipping away. Never mind those useless seasonal delineations marked on our calendars*, I define my seasons by the reality of the weather. Summer began on June 1st, and it ends on August 31st. Just seems reasonable to me. And we've certainly had plenty of winter before the winter solstice arrives.**

That's when I'll finish my painting; the one with me heaving a spear at a fleeing buck, atlatl artistically extended, the deer's fate a foregone conclusion. Future generations will be so impressed with this. I wonder if they'll call it art?

*Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter
** because winter begins on December 1st... and goes on forever.