(500) Days of Summer

There are no summers where I live. Or you could say that we do have summers, summers that never end, which can be nothing short of a nightmare a lot of the time. Some days the humidity makes me want to scream.

In my head, summers are ice-cream parlors manned by bored college students, book carts outside indie bookstores, outdoor concerts, impossibly green fields without a soul in sight, a graveyard that actually seems a blissful place under a benevolent sun, clusters of hydrangeas, lone trees set nobly against a clear horizon.

Those are the summers I want.

Incidentally, when I was in kindergarten, I was friends with a girl named Summer, and I remember thinking how special a name it was. To be named after a season.

Now the film "(500) Days of Summer" has introduced me to another Summer, a rather quirky one. The movie's about two people who seem perfect for each other, but aren't. Because one doesn't believe in love, and the other...the other is a dreamy romantic.

The leads are terrific. Just watch Joseph Gordon-Levitt's face in the first scene of the trailer; it goes from distracted to attentive to attracted to hugely smitten (much to his own shock, and he stares after Zooey Deschanel, who seems to have unwittingly dropped a bomb on him and then breezed out of the lift). Perfect.

This next video doesn't have much to do with the film itself, though it has the same director, Marc Webb, and features the two stars, Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. I like it because unlike most music videos, it doesn't feature the singer lip-synching or gazing directly into the video like a preening nymph. Instead, Zooey (who actually is the vocalist behind the song - she's the female part of the duo She & Him) and Joseph appear like they're having a grand time dancing.

We should all be so lucky.

Here Comes Your Man, by Meaghan Smith
Why Do You Let Me Stay Here, by She & Him

Once there was a tree

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
~ Joyce Kilmer

"Is true love a long walk through Bryant park
Or being held in the month of May
Under the peach trees?
There I will be, will be until you come and get me."
~ Peach Trees, by Rufus Wainwright

It begins and ends with a "B"

B is for books. For beasts and boulders and birdwings. For Bach and Boccherini. Chopin's Berceuse and Barcarolle. The biscuits and butter in the refrigerator. For "Butler" in William Butler Yeats. B is for the boy who said his name so softly that I misheard it. B is for bougainvillea and bergamot, birch trees, banter, and balance. B is because...because I cannot forget. Bring back to me that word, that laugh. A brush, a buzz, a beckoning. The bottom of the sea, where ocean behemoths slumber and battle, birth and fade. Dante's Beatrice whom he captured but could not have. A broken ballad. The blood that clings to its falling notes. Balloons over a famous city. A basking lizard stretched in the sun. The brown of an eye where wonders bloomed like ink blot visions. The bell that told me you were calling. The bleating of my bitten heart, a pale-white creature. The "b" that bends and bleeds into all the letters that build a name. When I am bruised, it is a balm, or worse. A burning. I cannot say what "b" means; it is beyond me. It is a remembering bar of music. The back that turned to me. It is a burden, a breath, a puzzle box, a boundless hope, and still more than all of these.

"Bright Star" -

"A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing." ~ John Keats

"The Lovely Bones" -