Summer > IDEAS & IDEALS

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Summer is the most difficult season of the four to manage. Compared with the same long season of winter, it poses more problems that do not allow easy solutions. Along with its antagonistic brother, winter, it is too long, to begin with. According to the calendar, each of the four seasons is equally allowed to have three months, but it is only in May, when the peonies in the back yard are in full bloom, that we can say we are in spring. The chilly, windy and even snowy March and April are better counted as winter. The Indian summer of September and October is literally a summer lingering or prolonged, and practically we have only one month of autumn, when the harvest is all done and the scarecrows are getting wet in the November rain on the empty fields.

     We have lesser problems in winter, probably because it has that effective psychological tranquilizer of snow. With the help of the freezing temperature, the snow buries everything - memories and desires - under the cover of its white blanket and keeps them undisturbed for the rest of the season. Winter keeps us warm and forgetful. A thick and heavy overcoat is all we need for winter. We may just allow ourselves to be wrapped up and bound in it, body as well as mind. A warm stove usually solves most of the problems, because people are unusually less ambitious in winter.

     Summer doesn't have such a tranquilizer as snow, nor anything that muffles our desire that we have in winter. Instead, we have all the stimulants : rising of the thermometer, twanging of mosquitoes, calling of the sea-waves, perspiration running down the spine, naked bodies of women as well as men everywhere on the beach and even on the street. The only possible tranquilizer we have in summer is the rain, but it is almost always the rain in the proverb: It never rains but pours.

     Among the problems that summer brings to us the biggest one is going to sleep at night. Going to sleep a problem? Yes, it surely is. To go to bed first and wait for the coming of gentle sleep is all right for other seasons, but not for summer. There is always some additional work to be done before you go to bed. First of all, you have to do something about the mosquitoes, the eternal curse on mankind, unless you want to sit up all night scratching and slapping in the dark.

     And sleep won't come easily. It's the high temperature and humidity that prevent its coming, and you should be a very insensible or insensitive person if you could fall asleep with the air-conditioner on, or with the sound of the electric-fan turning. One solution to this problem is to make yourself extremely sleepy before you go to bed by watching midnight TV shows, for example, so that you may fall into sleep immediately wherever you lie down. The inevitable consequence of this measure is the constant lack of sleep during the night, and the subsequent dozing during the day disregarding time, place and duty - on the running bus or during the office hours.

     Summer forces us to make decisions from moment to moment about everything around us. We are under constant pressure of making decisions, big and small, from the moment we get up from bed to the moment of falling asleep. To wear a tie or not is a question of no small enterprise. With lunch-time approaching we fall invariably into the great process of decision-making: Where to go? What to eat? Hot or cold? Must I eat lunch at all, without fail, even if I don't feel particularly hungry and don't have any appetite today? Do we eat in order to live, or do we live in order to eat? All these practical as well as philosophical questions demand immediate answers, and the decisions must be executed with a solemn and determined face, with clenched fists and firmly-set jaw. What can be done casually and matter-of-factly in other seasons must be all done with conscious effort and determination in summer.

     We cannot think or talk of summer without the vacation. It is as if summer would not materialize without it. We can take a vacation in any other season, but the vacation in summer does only count. In fact, summer becomes much more complicated by this blessed burden. You are really a man of Edenic innocence and of naivete, if you still believe that vacation is for rest. Without exception it turns out to be more work than rest. People become suddenly busy before the vacation lying ahead. They become much more anxious to use the time of vacation more intensely, and they make an exhaustive plan for it.

     Funny and strange, isn't it, that we should have even a plan for rest? I don't think we need any plan for rest. Doesn't it come of itself after work as naturally as night comes after the sunset? Anything turns into work the moment we plan for it. Do we need to have any plan for sleep which is the only and ultimate measure of rest for mankind? To plan to be far away from home, leaving everything ugly and unpleasant behind, and have a good rest strolling along the uninhabited beach or through the quiet and peaceful woods, is a myth, a useful myth that deceives us endlessly. Who can maintain his peace of mind in this romantic excitement? To leave your house itself is more than work; it is a risk, an adventure.

     The best way to survive this unmanageable season of summer is to be conquered by it, and completely. We had better know in advance that we can not resist it. Better admit it frankly that summer is by no means a season for our rest or comfort. How can we expect it from the season that would not allow us even an easy sleep at night? Therefore, leave home and go somewhere, although we know too well that there is no place for rest like home. Let drops of perspiration roll down our chest and wet our shirt-sleeves. Doze without shame. Give up all our futile resistance to it, and kneel down, and ask mercy. The moment we follow and obey all its orders loyally and faithfully, the imperious season of summer will relax its tyranny of oppression for a while and assume a benevolent smile of the benefactor by sending a bout of fresh and cool wind through the open window. And look! Autumn is already standing at the threshold in the shrill chirping of the cicadas.
             (August 28, 1991)