Around the middle of May, the first inkling of summer arrives.
It comes quietly, like a boat approaching from far away, carrying with it all the things summer is supposed to bring: warmth, sun, holidays, a certain looseness of time. In the past, summer meant holiday. Now it is more often the feeling of a holiday that I try to preserve, like a small flame protected from the wind.
The air is warm, but still thin. It does not yet have the heavy thickness of August, when the heat settles over everything and the streets seem to melt into silence. This is another kind of summer, earlier and more delicate. The shadows are strong, the days are long, and there is a yellow quiet over the city, the quiet of people avoiding the streets, of rooms with curtains half drawn, of afternoons that seem to wait for something.
When I was young, I remember looking at the mountain from the inner courtyard of my house. Birds would fly above it, and in my mind, somehow, they were seagulls. Summer used to mean the seaside. For many years at one point in my life, I have not seen the sea. I do not know why. It simply did not happen.
These first weeks of summer used to mean the packing away of the school year, the strange joy of endings, notebooks closing, windows opening. Now they mean the end of classes and the beginning of exams, which is different when you teach, but still strangely similar. They also mean the end of the concert season, another kind of curtain slowly falling.
I know that some sad things may happen for me this summer, and I do not know how I will react. Perhaps there will be no surprises. Perhaps summer, like everything else, will arrive with both its brightness and its shadow. Maybe I will not have the power anymore for any of this.
–
15 June 2026, New Moon
