The squint of sunshine pushes away all hints of intimacy in my life. The newfound contrast in colors forces my eyes to take in the surrounding that the gray tones of winter let me ignore. Six years, five months now I’ve lived in Seattle and the summer is looming, and after nine months of what could accurately be called winter I’m having to adjust to the new season, summer, again. I want my gloom of winter still. I’m a fair skinned boy with light-sensitive eyes and of northern European stock, Scandinavian, English, German and an inconsequential bit of Irish, although people, when they see my red hair, always want to know if I’m blarney, and I am, but it doesn’t give me the red, that’s Swedish. The rain, the gray clouds, it pushes me inside myself where I like to be, not having to come out and play. Not outside, inside. Cold that forces you indoors, the sting that resents the trip. Rain that beats you back inside yourself.

I like the idea of Southern California, and in my alternate life reality where I can make myself a tan brunette covered in coco butter moving out of the shade of palm trees until the sun goes down after its long, meandering arc and then it’s off to the open-shirt boulevards of the city where the warm vibe of the air hangs around even though the nighttime temperature has already dropped low.

That’s not me though. I’m angry at the sun, resenting its appearance, saying oooh look at me aren’t I pretty although in four months I’ll be waving a hanky at its departure and swooning over the inevitable hibernation to come. I’ll be worried when I stop doing that.

Introspective cold; memory making warmth. Summer, where you move through it and collect memories of the swimming pool when young and running through cornfields and your high school crush in shorts and the baseball hit and flying through the air as darkness claims the late night of July and nothing about words on the page or images on the screen. It’s the season of action. It’s an adjustment.