A Summer,
“For the Gypsy, it’s moments in time that count, not interpretations or rhetorical questions or resolutions or justifications, and not even the journey’s end, for the journey never ends. Just moments in time. They are born for disappearing”
A summer.
Or, more like a year, really. Moments saved.
Much has happened, and yet much has not.
July was simply dreary and wet. An odd thing to be for the prairies. Also - many naps, fueled by many snacks. Curled up in a brightly patched gem adopted from the local never lost but found shop. A large hole made by inches long claws and guarded fiercely by a single striped mama, while her young tumble and play.
The rodeo.
Brute strength pounds the ground, a vibration felt viscerally. Various souls work to outwit and outfox each other - a primal fight playing out on the stage. A moment measured in seconds - blink and its gone, slip and you’re gone - a loss tallied for the other side. Next time you think, as your bones wince in pain - next time that 8 seconds will be yours. While the victor, a gleam in their eye, a snort tossed to the clouds, a crown balanced between ears - beats a tattoo across the dirt. An eight second King - unquestioned - until the next round.
Weekends spent breathing burning rubber, exhaust and forgetting that hearing is thing.
Who needs the spa when dirt is a most excellent exfoliator. A place where nuance separates fast and quick, two words that are synonymous, but here - are worlds apart. Where speed in the straightest line possible is what is needed. No scenic routes, or the long way home. Where kissing the wall and little bit pink dot the common vernacular. A Christmas Tree in summer brightly speaks to who is quickest off the hop. Warm nights in Molly, a hug always from 1974.
A day walking amoung brightly coloured and discarded stuffies, overpriced hamburgers and stifling humanity.
A moment that happens here every year, where time stills and mores vanish. Inhibitions are replaced by inebriations, a soiree marked by tomfoolery and debauchery lit by neon lights beating to the music of two-steppin’ and trills of yahooing. A notorious week where an infliction suffered by King Henry the 8th spikes swirling on the belief that what happens in ______ stays in…..” Cotton candy smiles and candy apple grins - children dart and dive fueled by the sugar rush pulsing through their veins. It is a week to behold, to remember, and for some - to forget.
A week in the middle of nowhere.
There is something to be had in disconnecting from this viral world we are in. In remaining still in a space where the world has to work a little bit harder to reach you, if at all. An old stone home resting under a restless sky, companion only to the stray bear and scented air of apples dropping to the forest floor. Crickets prowl and butterflies swoon, starlings nest in empty eaves. The quiet hums.
Or maybe it simply comes from sleeping and waking next to a century worth of tombstones.
A summer, it was. Disappeared snatches of time - saved.
