Summers have always been cruel. The scorching sun and the scathing heat. The dull days and the weary faces. Cruel. Tyrant. Ruthless.
June and July with their capricious weather. Summer holidays but with loads of work and sweat. The sound of children playing and yelling in the evening. The cry of mynas and caws of crows at the break of dawn. Faint sound of unfamiliar music from some faraway source. Wedding drums and fireworks. New albums and old cassettes. Stolen glances and regretful sighs. Half-heartedly played board games. The same tv shows and the glowing screen of your own mobile. Old dusty books with pressed in flowers. Fresh mangoes and red watermelons. Hope and despair. Late nights with chats and music. Cruel and nostalgic. Something that attracts and repels at once. Moving forward and looking back at every few steps.
And then there’s August. Not the official end of summer. But the heat simmers down a little. And sun is not that cruel. And birds still shriek at the crack of dawn.
"August of another summer,
and once again
I'm drinking the sun"
-Mary Oliver, The Pond
Last year, I kept a diary. In which I’d write all the small yet pleasant or surprising details of life. The changing color of trees. The smell of cinnamon. The monstrosity of a sunflower. The best thing I noticed about August was the sky.
August has the most beautiful skies. Brilliant unstained blue. Gray and black whirlpool of lofty clouds. Shades of vermillion and red at sunset. Pinkish hue on sunrise. The lilac patches of clouds when there’s a sun hiding behind. The ivory white solitary cloud alone in the center of that vast blue paradise.
And whenever I think of august, I think of a beach. Not the bright golden San Sebastian. Neither the azure waters of Hawaii. Although I wouldn’t mind them too but the one behind my eyes is the most beautiful. There is faint sunlight, scattered and mangled from behind a few blotches of clear clouds. And an ocean with its rhythmic waves and blue solitude. There’s no one else there. Just the pulsating sound of the beautiful waves. That’s august, isn’t it?
Other times it’s a ship. Not a luxury cruise ship or some 90s steamboat, but a wooden one. The kind that gets shattered to wooden planks and splinters when the tide is high and waves are brutal and the winds roar and skies weep. But in this case, there’s no tempest. Instead, there’s a sun, so bright that it flashes the eyes and there’s a wind so strong that the beige sail never loosens and the waves are so calm that we forget that life exists beyond this realm of blue vastness.
And sometimes august is not a beach or a ship or an ocean. August is lying on the floor in your room, with the occasional gusts of wind from the open window, the scattered pages on your desk, the aloe vera which you forgot to water, your unmade bed, tangled hair, mismatched shoes and labyrinthine words in your head.
August is nostalgia and regrets and happiness and bliss and agony and ignorance. It is the month of middle of adventure tales and beginning of romantic cruises and the ending of magical fables. I don’t know why I like august. But I weirdly do. August is the bright people you meet in your life and the random fireworks you see on your way back home and that orange popsicle which drips on your white shirt and the salty air you smell when you approach the ocean and the tyrant gust of wind in your hair and the red heels you always wanted and never got.
Sadness and melancholy. Salt air and rose gardens. Cloudy skies and starry nights.
"Some days in late August at home
are like this, the air thin & eager like this, with something in it sad and nostalgic and familiar."
-William Faulkner
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