Monday, August 24, 2009

Life Would Be Ecstasy

On a Sunday afternoon. The temperature's about 88. On a Sunday afternoon. Escape the interior furnace. Couldn't get away too soon. The cars pull up. Out tumble children, out stumble old folk, out pops a lilo. There's a sort of a buzz. A constant hum. A constant contentment against the wash of waves. Picnics and umbrellas. Chatter, shouts, yelps, splashes, laughs. The back-and-forth pit and pat of paddles tennis-ing. The bounce of a football, a Barnes Wallis catching the wave together with a mini boogie board. Lying and sleeping. Strolling and distant, mind emptied of anything but that hum and the sound and vision of a beach Sunday in August. Floating and rolling. Even the gulls are languid, hanging on thermals, all but motionless. Heat and breeze, and everything stops for one of the last Sundays of summer, of real summer. Yellow alerts of temperatures, as they are greater than 88 by mid-afternoon, slowing everyone down but not the kids who race everywhere, constant blurs in motion, to the water, into the water, then back, grab a mask, back to the water, cajoling, arguing, shouting; little Bobby builders constructing castles along the coast. 60s latin soul congas on an I-Pod and sunny 90s Philly rap twists and winds from a system. The beach bars packed, bowls of mussels, the coals of a barbecue, how the smell from a grill can spark off nostalgia, chunks of ice clunking into glass, excited babble and bursts of laughter. The guys drumming their washboards, checking out the honeys from the back, the summer's a natural aphrodisiac. Summer time. On a Sunday afternoon. August high summer and holiday, but summer's coming to an end but it isn't. The long hours of a Sunday afternoon, the endless sun and the endless hum, the constancy of every year and every Sunday the same. Think of the summers of the past. Nothing else seems to matter in this endless summer and on this endless Sunday in August. We'll keep on spending sunny days this way.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Oasis, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEzmU7YSXJs. Today's title - from which all-time great summer record does this, and other references, come, and what is the other summer song referred to in the above?

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