It's summertime...

And time for the summertime blues.

Yesterday, on the steps of Campbell Hall, while awaiting our stage call for the dress-rehearsal of this year's Reel Loud Film Festival, Tomás began a walking blues in a major scale.

And after several bars of "faking it" I decided that I would just sing the summertime blues, in that strange juxtaposition, minor sentiments, major scale, the paradox of easy living, and summer breezes, and the the deep melancholy of such a protected child.

"One of these mornings... you're gonna rise up singing... and you'll spread your wings... and you'll take to the sky... but until that morning... ain't nothin' gonna harm you, with Mammy and Daddy standing by..."

My parents are coming out to see me in a little over a week. They'll whisk little I. and me away for a few days, and there is something so comforting in knowing that I have the luxury of loving parents, who, despite the fact that I have not yet obtained a faculty position elsewhere, (and therefore) not finished and filed my dissertation on "time" are here to celebrate our summertime festivities: their 40th? anniversary, Father's day, and of course, the yearly anxiety producing reminder of my nascence and impending mortality.

So the abject terror that gripped the insides of my esophagus the other day, while innocently riding my bike to work, the sheer panic at blind nothingness, is slowly being placated. I found myself switching from my usual NPR chatter on my way to I.'s school for a classic rock station... and was reminded that life's (mostly) been good to me so far.

In fact, I have absolutely no justifiable right to complain about anything. At all. So, I'll slide in and out of the summertime blues, but with a shift of perspective, a climbing major scale to play with the crowd's expectations. To play with my own expectations. The sun is shining. The devastation on the gulf coast seems so far away. Even farther the economic sanctions being put on countries whose poorest most vulnerable denizens will suffer the effects long before the pressure will be felt by their "leaders." Even the students and faculty, whose protest for immigration reform I supported in a rally down town yesterday, spent a night in jail that I will likely never see.

My life, as it turns out, is blessed. So until that morning, I'll remember Joni Mitchell's words, it's "Only a dark cocoon before I get my gorgeous wings...And I fly away. Only a phase, these dark cafe days."