Summer...

So summer finally arrived here in the durty south and that means many things...
First off, as many of you know I have an odd masochistic streak in me that demands that I spend time during the summer outside with children. I usually hurt myself in this fashion by working at the local Boy Scout Camp for 6 weeks: bossing around idiot underlings, reading philosophy, writing letters, catching up on the New Yorker and all in all enjoying the sights and smells that awaken those old memories which lie in my genes. To catch the smell of sweet grass or the distant stench of decay. To notice the smell of wild roses or that smell that comes from cold droplets of rain frying on the scorched earth. These reach back into what we can claim to be our primal "essences." Stamped in proteins and passed down before the dawn of the language and concepts we use to describe them. But I puff up and digress.... This is an experience I cherish more than almost any other and it has stood as such a formative one that I cannot imagine my life without it in my passt. Needless to say this year "real life" intruded upon my Rousseau-esque idealizations in the form of that need for health insurance. My employer could not spare me for 5 weeks and quitting is not an option at this point. So I figured out a way to tag along as a volunteer with a group of 14 urban youth who had been collated so as to keep them off "the streets." It should be a requirement for everyone to spend a week in close quarters with a group of people whose background is so different from your own (riding the subway does not count here). It was great times and I will have to elaborate more at a later date. I am getting lost in my own silliness....
Summer also means reading and writing and watching movies that are totally sweet. I have already finished 2 Faulkner novels, Sedaris' most recent (which if you listen to This American Life or read The New Yorker) there is absolutely no reason to buy, and am well in to re-reading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince in preparation for the upcoming movie. I saw Star Trek twice (tottally fucking sweet), Terminator: Salvation (which was so terrible I loved it), and this past weekend I saw Transformers 2 (also twice, and if anyone can explain where the Air & Space Museum actually is I would appreciate it. It clearly is not where I thought it was).
More to follow....