Written 9-1-19
Our Summer of Love is kaput. Totally, because summer is kaput. What started for us during Memorial Day Weekend at Skamania Lodge & Resort in the Gorge, then crossed the border into Victoria BC for our 25th Wedding Anniversary, now ends at Cannon Beach, OR and then later at Buoy Beer Co. Restaurant in Astoria, OR. during Labor Day Weekend. It was a magnificent, glorious summer of love!
Time to crank up some Giacomo Puccini opera tunes! Actually, we were getting a little ahead of ourselves as we listened to different Puccini songs on the drive to the beach.
For all that time and all that music, it was like the musicians and singers were merely practicing. It felt and sounded the same way when singers sing off stage, somewhat muffled. They needed us here. At the beach. At sunset, as the light and the summer finally slips away right in front of us to truly belt out their love songs about farewells, and surrender.
Opera was invented for moments like these. Arias are designed to suspend everything around us for short moments of time as we endlessly listen and understand intense music and exquisite songs about our deepest feelings.
Like no one we’ve heard yet, Giacomo Puccini produced deeply romantic music about discovery, connecting, happy planning, abrupt tragedy, then everlasting haunting remembrance.
Kind of like realizing summer is really over. Again.
They say you should never turn away from the ocean just in case the waves increase but when summer is ending it’s absolutely titillating to twirl around in the water back towards the continent and reach out to all your summer memories as the music plays on. For a few moments, you can find yourself in your own summer aria reminiscing about all those summers with all those summer adventures. Yet, as you extend your reach back towards those delicious memories, the summer aria vanishes in an instant as a healthy, cold wave smacks you in your back.
The ocean has once again pointed out the obvious. Summer’s gone now, and the summer aria is now gone too, and that summer aria will not be back again until Labor Day weekend next year.
In the meantime, play those Puccini opera tunes a bit louder, one more time please, and let’s have a little more beer and wine. There is still a little light out there — we can still feel the sunshine on our faces. Goodbye Summer of Love. It was fun. It’s always fun, but we have to move on now.
We’re going back home tomorrow to start Our Fall / Winter of Love!
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