(Photo: Jorge)

And just like that, Summer is fixing to deliver us to Fall again. To what passes as Fall in Florida, at least.

Approaching the end of the second pandemic year, Spring 2020 now sounds so naïve, extremely far, another reality as we looked into the abyss trying to make sense of what was happening, each one in his sometimes very peculiar way. Remember how we were told to lockdown for two weeks while the Idiot in Chief assured us that it was really nothing, some people even got just the sniffles? Calm down, people.

Well, little did we imagine that was just the teaser.

And here we are.

But at the crossroads of Franklin and Tuscawilla, we programmatically hold on to our shreds of hope as we put our best face forward. It has been an extremely eventful summer that began with a family wedding and participation in a group show in Puerto Rico in June, the birth of a new itty bitty granddaughter shortly after, big house projects (and I mean, we went big with the backyard this year…), visits upon visits of those who love us and now me getting ready to turn the big 70 in a week. And we see the seasons roll as all signs point to one more slide into the end of another year and the end of a season into another.

Now, I have taken back to gluttony reading lately and it feels like being reborn.

Among other things, this summer I finished my fourth re-reading of Cien Años de Soledad, this time in an Italian edition I bought in Rome. It is kind of embarrassing to admit that it took me four readings to realize that Melquiades’ manuscripts were, well, Cien Años de Soledad, that is, the novel is really a transcription of the manuscripts Aureliano Babilonia was reading at the very end of the novel the novel was a character in the novel. I am sure there were armies of very smart Comp Lit students that realized this decades ago. Call me a late bloomer.

And this summer I also finished two beautiful and engrossing books I had been slowly working on: Epidemics and Society, by Frank Snowden and Wabi Sabi by Andrew Juniper, two books you have trouble putting down, written for the curious but not necessarily academic reader.

And I just finished reading two novels by Japanese writers: ‘Strange Beasts of China’, by Yang Ge in an English translation by Jeremy Tiang and ‘De Pronto Oigo la Voz del Agua’, by Hiromi Kawakami, in a Spanish translation by Yoko Ogihara, both of them reaching out to a similar subliminal effect, each in its own way but both distilled through a melancholic and evocative narration. Beautifully textured language (even in translation), with deep mysteries glimpsed through gauze curtains of desire and dread. Highly recommended, both, just turned me into a Kawakami fan.

So, it has been a summer of spiritual recharging, but balanced by good ol’ physical positive and productive exertion (can’t be artsy all of the time…): my ‘kid’ brother visited with his wife this summer and we spent a week completing and enhancing the backyard redesign work started earlier by Eliseo and his crew. So, lots of moving blocks, leveling ground, planting new life and sweating the heck off the day. It was great.

And then Jess and Johnny have made the trek down from Charlotte twice since July, with newly minted baby Maya and the two most opinionated doggos a bitch has come up with. And my other brother, Juan, is arriving this week from Puerto Rico to celebrate our birthdays (his is just days after mine).

On the Garden Front, this year the old Ficus Persevericus put forth an avalanche of figs in the late spring and even our wimpy olive ‘tree’ gave us about 5 or six olives this summer. Our first crop! We don’t have a firm number for that one because our backyard denizens would dispatch them before you could say ‘tapenade’, the rascals. And now, as we are handed over by summer to fall, the ginger patch in the property line between Steve’s wildflowers garden and Wanda’s wedelias, has exploded into a landslide of very red very plump ginger flowers like you have never seen.

And, if you needed any more signs that Fall is around the corner, the Gators had their first ‘loss by two points’ of the season and the temperature has stayed under 83 degrees Fahrenheit a couple of times. Now, that is a north Florida autumn if there is one.

So, it’s been a summer of spiritual recharge, with plenty of beautiful input from plenty of loved ones, some from as far as the Land of the Rising Sun and some at reaching distance, some poets you would love to meet in person and many out of towners dropping in to be embraced.

And we are ready for the Fall. And Fall being the harbinger of Winter, we all will excitedly (speaking for myself here…) fix to ride the Fall season into one more Winter of tying loose ends and of unfounded hopes of renewal and improvement. And celebrate that we are still around and we have so many people to love and be loved by.

At the moment, I am polishing off my Holidays goodies recipes. There will always be reasons to celebrate.

It’s all good…