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What happened last summer? Nothing. Indeed, last summer was the first summer in your experience for which you gained no crazy memories. The summer during which everyone you know grew up, forsook the easy fun of youth. Last summer was the summer which ended all summers.

One long day bled into the next.

polaroid one
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Reading Deleuze on a pub patio over a pint of Wheat Ale in the late morning. Tangy lemon slice squeezed and dropped into cold, pale liquid beneath a hot sun. This is breakfast. Street noise becomes white noise permitting concentration. Until. The words of Superpositions blurring signals the need to move onto the next segment of your day.

polaroid two
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A coffee shop and more time by yourself. Sort of. Scribbling notes and half-listening to the tiny voice of your favourite barista.

I'll say, 'I knew him when....'

-when he used to pay in loose change and bother you to top him up - free of charge, of course.

Well, he had a way with words, even then.

polaroid three
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A languorous lunch of Thai food coupled with Derrida's playful language. Dissolving words. Building thought. Rebuilding language from the ground up. The menu is unreadable: the Thai, indecipherable, and the English, even worse. So you order by the number. Eat a little, and take the rest to go - you'll have it for when you get hungry later on.

polaroid four
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The afternoon is for writing, and words come easily as they always do. Thought stretches out in the afternoon heat until it reaches a breaking point and words explode onto the screen. You run with it. Fingers tapping keys, your mind racing. Go with whatever thought jumps into your head. You find your voice, become comfortable with it. Plant seeds. Make plans for the future.

polaroid five
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The everyday. Comfortable solitude. Now, you sit beneath a spring Sun. A different Sun. A suburban Sun. You sit on your own patio with a bottle of imported beer beneath the shade of your oak trees admiring the green of your lawn stretching out before you. You'll trade the cramped smoky air of the public house for a cool, clean breeze any day. A barista’s disingenuous words for the chattering of squirrels. Pad Thai for barbequed steak.

What will happen this summer? Probably nothing. At least, not until you begin reflecting on it a year later. Memory builds slowly. Even slower than the explosion of the downtown core. Cranes moving mammoth I-beams, slowly giving rise to the skyscrapers of tomorrow. Floor by floor, concrete is poured. Men and women in hardhats crawl all over the site. Busy little ants on a hill.

So far away.