The Slipperyness of Summer

Here I am now in Provo, in the third week of school, sipping anxiously away at the dregs in the bottom of the mint julep of Summer. (Pardon the metaphor.) Just a few days ago, I was looking around at the world, at the sincerity of warmth's ubiquitous green-and-yellow luminosity, and suddenly felt this tug of nostalgia that it will all be gone, so soon. It felt like a cancer patient's spouse probably--possibly--feels; aware that the time won't last, meanwhile never wanting to let it go.

Death would be a great adventure

Yet, Fall--and all instances of Natural Death--seems to me an obviously necessary ingredient of life. Change, itself, is a sort of Death, isn't it? a death that comes and goes even without our realization, leaving twists and turns in our paths as we step, oblivious, until we reach a place of retrospect?

Then perhaps death itself is only just another one of the million instances of change. On a larger scale, of course. (I think we all realize it's a bit more consequential than switching from Oprah to Dr. Oz.) After all, Peter Pan says that "To die would be a great adventure," (to which Captain Hook replies "Death is the only adventure you have left") although, ironically, Peter Pan's character abhors change enough to live in Neverland.

And I guess there lies the difference in Death's version of change. Through all the sheer bravado with which one may face death, it has an inexorable sense of finality, a sense of a deep chord that signals the end of the concerto. It's like the feeling you get when you leave a place you're never coming back to.

Regardless, isn't the sun shining, isn't the grass green? Isn't life good?

That'll be a yes.

Yes, life is good. What else can it be when I have brains in my head and feet in my shoes, and can steer myself any direction I choose?

Not much else, I'd say. 

"So be sure when you step

step with care and great tact

and remember that Life's

a Great Balancing Act." -Dr. Seuss