On the final day of summer
I spent the final days of summer at the city pool. Floating on my back, gazing into the blue of space, and hearing myself breathe.
Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale…
The muffled scrape of air filling and escaping my lungs. I heard myself say, “There you are, Michael. This is you,” as the sky beamed down at me, Father Universe.
“I see you.”
Photo by Seth Doyle on Unsplash
A flood of memories tumbled out of the blue—a trip to North Carolina, then Ohio, Lollapalooza with my daughter, Hinterland with a friend named Andrea. A magical afternoon in the sun at Gillson Park with another friend named Athanasia on the shores of Lake Michigan. The summer had unleashed sweat and dust and music into my life, scattered the anxiety into manageable portions, and rained down hope that life would not always be painful. I felt blessing and purpose among a kaleidoscope of experiences that for a brief moment lying on my back face up in a chlorine-baked pool seemed to fall out onto and around me.
Inhale, exhale…
There was that moment when my daughter got to see their favorite band for the first time. Packed shoulder to shoulder screaming, “I've been scared of sleeping with the lights on/ Know she's not there, I know she's going to his flat…” The dust spiraling up from our feet before mushrooming into heavy clouds on our shoulders. “One day, I know that you will be there/ One day, I'll focus on the future, maybe,” we sang. And then the crowd at Noah Kahan where the smell of weed alone seemed to lift us from the ground into one angelic choir, “She calls me, she calls me back…” And as the sun dipped behind the Chicago skyline Billie Eilish leapt onto stage in a Chicago Bulls jersey to spray us with her acid-laced love poems. The next day found me at Hinterland under a soft rain among kind Iowans singing with Sylvan Esso whispering, “Hey mami, I know what you want, mami.” As the rain lulled, the sky opened, and a rainbow stretched out over the festival.
T and me about to hear Billie Eilish at Lollapalooza 2023 in Chicago. My first time wearing eyeliner. It’s what you get when you attend a music festival with a 15-year-old.
When summer began, I didn’t know that I’d also find my first writer when I’d go to Ohio…Or when I’d make it to North Carolina it would be to take my brother and his family in my minivan. The surprises this summer held still baffle me.
Inhale, exhale…
They fell on me in an avalanche of images as I lay there breathing, waiting for the life guard’s whistle to signal the end of summer.
I was expecting regret with that final whistle but was met instead with a desire to answer this question:
“What do you want, Michael?”
It galvanized me to sit by the pool and listen to Nahko and Medicine for the People sing “Give it all you got/Give it all you got/We’ll make stories we’ll make love/ and that’s enough.” I would later hop on my bike and spend an hour at my second office in the cafeteria of Bread Garden Market thinking, “What do I want?” I’m 44. I’m healthy. I feel like 16, a feeling that’s always shown false whenever I step onto a skateboard. The point is that I take care of myself. But what am I taking care of myself for? What is life asking of me? to borrow Frankl’s question.
At the supermarket I yielded to the moment, scribbling my ideas into a worn notebook I use for work…
I want my children to be a greater part of my life, to have long conversations about life like I do with other people. It’s a tough ask given the recent divorce and our separate, different, momentous struggles. My identity is dislocated. I want literature parties and cookouts, ski trips and beach vacations, financial security…If I’m being materialistic, a Range Rover, a house in Greece, music festivals scattered throughout the summer, the year…Exercise twice a day, working from home, a job hat consistently brings people more success than anticipated. I want to drink deeply from the essential desires of life, and I don’t mean the desires essential for survival but the desires essential to feel alive and know that life is this delicate, beautiful arrangement of lights that make little sense when too close but form a constellation from a distance.
Is this asking too much?
Rilke writes, “You see, I want a lot. Maybe I want it all…” Guilty. Perhaps I, too, want it all, and I’m willing to admit it, to let the statement flutter about and see if it has substance. Guilty. Maybe I want it all. Maybe.
