Summering: A Manifesto

After a week of gray skies and constant rain, the clouds rolled back and the waters parted today in Knoxville, and I was bitten by the summer bug. I tried to stave her off for most of the afternoon so I could get some work done on the papers, presentations, and poetry collections I have coming due, but my defenses were depleted by 5 o'clock, at which point I went on a mini shopping spree for summer clothes (gotta love 40% off sales at Old Navy) and spent an hour or so on the wonderful nature trail behind my apartment complex. It was warm but not hot, sunny but not scorching, a bit warmer than spring--a taste of summer. Now I've got full-blown summer syndrome, and I question how I'll make it through four more weeks of school. Maybe making a manifesto well help.

Therefore, let it be known, that from May to August in the year of our Lord 2008, I will live in moderate excess, a condition of my own creating, and experience to its fullest summer as a young adult in a bona fide college town with wonderful friends to share my experiences with.

I plan to drink a little too much wine, sing a little too loudly and more-than-off key to pop rock songs on front porches with disillusioned young adults as we discuss or experiences teaching disillusioned teenagers. I will take a few too many pictures and stay out a little too late a few too many nights and love every minute of it.

I will keep track of my summer by making lots of mix c.d.'s, and then I'll give my mix c.d.'s to friends who will have shared the summer with me so they can always have the memories of long nights and hot days.

I will read, read like it's going out of style. Everything I can: my dear friend Carlini and I will have an MA reading list read off and get together every week to talk about what we've learned, and I'll read all the books on my shelf that I've bought and haven't had a chance to get through yet. Toni Morrison, you're oeuvre I will consume. Then I'll read things again, just so I can check on my fictional friends and see how they are doing.

I will write, so much my hand aches from scribbling and my wrists will burn from the vast amount of lines I'll type up and send out and be okay with their rejection when I start getting the slips. I'll write about everything--write outside my normal genre. I'll write the next great American novel, or at least I'll give myself permission to if I want to. And if I don't, at least I'll know I could have.

I will dance a little too close with, gaze a little too long at, cling a little too passionately to all the ones dear to me. I will shower the people I love with love.

I will be silly and let myself fall for a summer romance, if the opportunity so presents itself, and we will ride bicycles and have picnics at dusk.

I will camp and swim and hike and go days without showering because I'll want the dirt-musk smells to linger, for the memories to linger.

I will not take myself so seriously, and I'll play and love and be young and interesting.

Who's with me?