A Season Sandwich

I spent the summer naked, cooking, cleaning, reading, napping, working online. 

In Portland, Maine, I live in a converted 1800s house attic window to attic window with a neighbor who keeps the curtains opened. After a while, though, heat trumped decency, and I hoped that at the very least he thought me graceful in my nudity, if ever he peeked my way.

Sitting on a window seat while working on the computer, I imagined myself in a sandwich packed nicely between heat steaming of clouds that sheltered in trunks of maple trees and rose off brick sidewalks, gentle blue skies, and the self-standing fan that blew on me day and night.   It felt sane and inviting in the cool, naked in-between except when I thought of the fashion of productivity (my protocol mind believes in dressing for constructive production, even though I teach online and students would never guess at my new “clotheless” work ethic).  When I gave into angst of being nude at 11:00 am, even if for a second, the sweat collected on my brow, and it felt like I was stewing in the first bubbling soup of hot, murky creation. So I gave in to summer’s demand I forgo clothes and eventually forgot I was always in the buff.  

It's funny, at first I was acutely aware of my nakedness as if the act itself was too rebellious, unheard of, and demanded some internal justification, even though I live alone. Was I even allowed to be so rapturously free in my own skin? Wasn't I suppose to be aware of some religious, social, psychological implication about exposing the body? Wasn't I suppose to carry the inferiority of some or all of my body parts? Were my biker's thighs too muscular, my arms to flabby, my...? For a long minute I was hyper-conscious and distracted by it all. In my society, the body is everywhere but only to be judged by magazines, plastic surgeons, beauty experts, social media, women, men.  And it always comes up short. 

I love that scene in "Love in the Time of Cholera" when the two fated lovers meet, already very aged, and consummate their love with falling skin and rattling bones. I consider that one of the most beautiful sex scenes ever.  There is something calming, natural, and normal about going beyond definitions, labels, and limitations of anything--fear, beauty, love, happiness, sadness, sex, anger.... The truth of my summer nakedness was simple: Like anything, it was nothing more, nothing less, unless I made it so, and this rationalization was very Buddhist on my part.

But back to my contemplation on the infernal heat: Unlike the many years I spent living under a Florida sun, which has the focus of a surgeon on a incisive hunt, Maine’s sun is gentle, non-prying, and shy.  Its skies don’t glare or create visions on the highway. Its heat travels mostly with gentle breezes except on days it takes center stage.  There is the occasional fog that swallows up the town and a rain storm here and there to let out the built-up pressure of a too hot day.

I learned to love summer this year and appreciate passing time in its cradle, the seasons.  In Florida the season of summer was constant; it gave the illusion that there was an eternity of time to do, to wait, to, for example... learn a language, leave an unhappy marriage or finalize a divorce, complete a degree, travel; that is until you turned 75, and like my friend’s aunt, sat all day in a rocking chair bemoaning wasted dreams, goals….

In Maine you know, feel, and welcome beginnings and endings. You say, ‘enjoy the warmth because soon we’ll be at 5 below.’  You canoe, wear shorts, sandals, straw hats, drink beer on decks, nap, lounge around, and believe wholeheartedly in summer--when it arrives and stays for a while--because soon you will need to change clothes, plans, mindset, forgot about the past and live in a whole new, compelling and demanding present.
"Memoir, "The Continent of Ruby," available at: http://www.amazon.com