Well, it’s summer yet again.
The heat, followed by endless drizzles recently falling over the city skyline reminds me of that; the novel “Call Me By Your Name” and its endlessly description of the summer’s all kinds of wired but full-on feelings remind me of that; the start of July, also painfully reminds me of that.
Today is July 1, the day marking the end of the first six months of this 2020 with all kinds of unexpected twists in human history.
But let's put this aside: we are going to talk about summer. Summer, famous for its hot weather and free time, is always the perfect time for leisure. People go to beach to get tanned, people go to their villas to experience a bucolic lifestyle. But maybe I am being too western, and one might accuse me of sounding like a bourgeois. That might be right. I mean, I've recently been reading “Call Me By Your Name”, where western summer lifestyle of a typical middle-class family is portrayed behind a breathtaking love story.
Another thing that reminds me of summer is the hit TV show “隐秘的角落”, recently coming out as a fairy tale told completely in an adult way. The main character, a vilified-by-his-family teenager, really reminds me of the summer a lot of years back: the adventure, the homework, the friends, and the little bicycle I used to own and all those “bus routes” I used to create around the childhood apartment through the spiderweb-like alleys. But that is childhood summer, the most carefree summer of all. I would ride my bike all day, in and out those valleys, reading every store’s name out loud as though they were bus stops and I was the bus driver.
Now with the threat of COVID-19 in the air, it seems that this summer might become tedious other than my daily visit to the driving school. The driving school at noon is just hell: the sun shoots all kinds of beam down on the ground, and everything is burning: the cement floor, the car window, my skin. But the driving school is full of people: interesting people from everywhere in the city. Talking with them makes me feel I belong to this city, to life.
I like swimming in the summer; but where to? I'm in such a small city that it is assured that every pool here is crowded, as we Chinese call “like boiling the dumplings”. About swimming, I especially like this feeling of a little asphyxiation from between strokes. That also makes me feel alive.
Another thing I like about swimming is the water; is the feeling of being surrounded by cool water. That always makes me calm. I won't swim in the river, or in the lake. Why? The water is not clear, and it might just get too dangerous. Would you try? Not in a million years.
I might travel in the summer: that's always a possibility, although this year that might be the deal (amid this worldwide pandemia) to the city of Shanghai. I have already missed big metropolitans, not that a small city is bad, but I have not been staying in my hometown for so long since high school graduation.
I often say: time is not going to stop advancing. But I feel so left behind, yet I have no idea how to struggle to pick up the time I may have lost. Or I don't have the energy.
So. Summer. Halftime of the year.
Let it begin.
