Summer Nights

It seems like I haven't posted in just about forever, as last week was incredibly busy -- started my writing class (yay! thanks to all my great students!), then next day left for a long weekend at the Lowell Folk Festival. If you have never gone to the Lowell Folk Fest, indeed if you have never heard of it, I am here to testify that it is one of the best music festivals in the country, if not the world. And I've been to a few, here and abroad. First of all, it's free (volunteers schlep donation buckets around, and you get lovely Mardi Gras beads when you contribute, but you don't have to. Although I highly encourage it, as we want this grand tradition to continue). Second of all, you can hear fantastic music from all over the world -- this year some of the samplings were a kick-butt rocking Irish band, Brazilian Forro (kind of like Cajun music), Cajun, of course, Laotian, Afro-Cuban, and an amazing practitioner of Gypsy Jazz, a guitarist a la Django Reinhart, and his band and guest artists from France. Thirdly, the city of Lowell turns into one giant street fair, with great food, all the cool mill museums open, and just a great scene.
But maybe the very best thing about the folk fest for me is that I can indulge in perhaps my most favorite activity of all time, which is to be outside on hot summer nights. There are so many ways to do it, for so many reasons. You can lie on a blanket at a night concert, listening to great music. You can take a telescope out to star-gaze. You can round up your friends and go for a forbidden midnight swim in a resevoir, and have the cops chase you through the woods, dripping, and carrying rather than wearing most of your clothes (I wouldn't recommend this one unless you are under 25). You can simply sit on your back stoop and watch the fireflies. Sometimes, I set up my tent in the backyard and lie reading far into the night by lantern-light, with all the tent windows and sky lights open so whatever breeze there may be finds my skin. I read summer books then. Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine is one of the best, as is the great Eudora Welty's Losing Battles. Or I read books set in cold climates, in winter. A wonderful book I call the mukluk book (it's real title is Ordinary Wolves, by Seth somebody). Or the amazing His Dark Materials trilogy by Phillip Pullman, which includes The Golden Compass, The Amber Spyglass, and The Subtle Knife. Right now I'm reading a fairly new Stephen King called Lisey's Story ( I'm not normally into Stephen King, but his books really are good reads, I'm discovering). But enough of the summer reading list.
The exercise today is really a night-based exercise called, naturally, Summer Nights. Find a reason to hang around outside tonight. Take a walk through suburban streets, look in the houses. Maybe you can even see faces illuminated by the blue TV light, or older couples sitting on their porches. If you live in the country, sit in the nearest field and look for shooting stars. In the city, sit out on your porch, or on your roof, and listen to the parties going on around you, or the kid next door practicing his sax, or the dogs a few streets down calling to each other mournfully. Or take a walk on city streets, as everybody is out walking around too, eating ice-cream cones, instead of sitting in their hot apartments. Whatever you choose to do, commit an Act of Attention to it, then write it, draw it. And enjoy it, as summer is all too fleeting.