A Summer's Day Man, Myth, and Magic

A Summer's Day by Joel Meyerowitz (NY: Times Books, 1985)

Man, Myth & Magic: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Supernatural, ed. by Richard Cavendish (NY: Marshall Cavendish Corporation, 1970), Vols. 11-17, 19-21

"Summer is a time for remembering, a time for taking in." -Joel Meyerowitz

Still holding onto this summer, darker than usual and full of man, myth, and magic, echoes of the lately dead.

I finished this book when the son was still shining and the father had not gone down.

It revisits a world I had the pleasure of as a boy—my parents frequently took us to beaches on holidays. And then my education was never far from the Atlantic.

The Pacific shore is where I wound up (washed up?) in life—Central Coast of California—though I don't spend much time on the beach, where dogs get sandy. My vantage point is bluff-top on a morning run or a campus walk.

Our shoreline holds little scraps of tar, so that after a long walk on the strand your sole is stained with gritty ooze.

Natural seepage it is, they say, though we can plainly see our coast is rigged. Earth Day had its origin here after a spill. Those platforms make one consider the true cost of one's leisure.

A summer's day cannot overlook the demons.