Breezy Suburban Summer Evenings

Green, green youth
What about the sweetness we knew?
What about what’s good, what’s true
From those days…

It’s no secret that I make some pretty thorough rounds through a number of what I can only refer to as paradises. These middle-ground idealistic realms neatly reside on the border between the real world and sheer imagination, but unlike the stereotypical sort of imaginative paradises, there is nothing in mine that contradict logic or physics…at least to any obvious degree. The imagination involved in my paradise is only a subtle bend on tangible circumstances; polishing details, enhancing elements slightly– but mostly it involves the tinkering and re-writing of my own mind; erasing bits of knowledge, presence, body, and memory…so that they are experienced not by the culmination of my individual, past and present, but simply through my one curious and present-minded eye. While some use imagination to rearrange the world into impossible and fantastical situations to achieve satisfaction, I simply leave the world as it is, and direct my imaginative power inward to rearrange myself– my memories, experiences, and perspectives– to achieve satisfaction with the natural world.

I have logged many such places over the years, but the one that has haunted me the longest has been returning lately, likely due to the incredibly cool summer we’ve been having, which seems to be drawing the best out of me. And while it’s a rather unlikely candidate for someone’s idea of paradise, there is just something about those old-suburban neighborhoods with their abundance of greenery and their soft fresh linen atmospheres. Broken sidewalks. Vast looming oak, maple, and willow trees. Victorian era houses with large yards and elegant shrubbery. The scent of wet cut grass, age, and storm drains. The feel of clean soft new clothes. A sense of anticipation, and adventure, mingling with the heavenly comfort of youth and quiet happy surroundings. In a moment dusk becomes night, and it begins to rain. Streetlights illuminate pillars of falling water; reflect against the wet leaves that hang low enough in the trees. A single car hisses slowly down the street in the water….and I watch, from an open window, the extra-cool rainy evening air pushing erratically against my face, teasing me. Outside a million lights with a million promises, and endless sea of potential beauties too vast to ever begin to comprehend. All of this I watch through the window of imagination, while standing firmly and literally in reality. I have to find places whose atmospheres and circumstance resemble the paradise I wish to peer into in order to do so adequately, but in a pinch I can use my own memory to access such a place, and peer in from there…but experiencing it personally and physically is much preferred.

The importance of adventure is often taken for granted, I think. It is, after all, an activity that perfectly combines both control and helplessness; a delicious little paradox element that I simply can’t resist. It involves being forced to deal with and endure uncomfortable and new situations, in order to achieve a higher goal or destination. One controls ones self, through the helplessness of foreign landscapes. A vessel on the sea. An old car down the highway. A well dressed body climbing the steps to knock on your door…