The first breath of summer brings with it a hunger to catapult over ourselves, to grow wild. To climb, vine-like, beyond work and darkness and books. To cling to the wall and blossom there.

Not to go on to new things right away, but to take the old ones and make them flower.

Not to change, but to flourish.

We remember things about ourselves in summer, the things we have always loved about being alive.

We strip ourselves of sweaters and of pretensions, of windows and of neckties. We come out to dance and to breathe on liquid nights, and we collide with what and whom we've been ignoring or avoiding. We embrace them, grow passionate about them, call them our own.

Otherwise, we let them go. There is too much life on balmy streets to squander on obligations.

Summer has no obligations. Only desire - - the low buzz of something you want to happen.

Summer takes us back to what is most basic, what we need to do to be truly whole. Summer is poetry without criticism.

So vacation isn't what I'd call it. It's a hovering, a plumbing of the depths. Sit in one place, but swing there.

Why travel, when there is so much joy, and even purpose, in stasis? Why move cross- country, when a quest for wholeness in our own yard may take us further? To places that can't be photographed...

If I ever travel the world, I'll do it in the spring, when youth rages in my veins and remembers life as it might be. Or in the fall, when wisdom seeks me out, and I grow analytical - - and just a bit older.

But summer, to me, is about staying still and listening. To the brief whisper of the evening, between the pink-orange sun and the warm gray dusk and the languid movement of blackness that slides into night.

Summer is the time to stretch yourself over the moment.

To experience the things that are slowly becoming other things, at their own pace.

To transform what is good into what is true.

To decide what is unnecessary, and strip it off.

To take what is beautiful, and make it yours.