Bernadette Benda

1.

I am once more sitting at the lake (yes, in my car). It’s warm this time, and the lake is very blue, though it admittedly looks a lot more turquoise through my sunglasses. (Do you ever take your sunglasses off and are suddenly disappointed at the actual color of everything? Like excuse me, someone put the Instagram filter back on please?)

It’s starting to feel like summer, which is weird because it’s only April 9^th. It’s also weird regarding the fact that last Thursday (April 1^st) we had a full on blizzard. This is why I don’t believe in storing winter or summer clothing. You never know when you might need it. (My motto is always be prepared. I’m one of those people who don’t leave the house without water and a snack because you never know what’s going to happen.) (You remember what Bilbo used to say, “you step out your door, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you may be swept off to) And with this warm weather, comes a painful reminder:

Summer is loud.

Chainsaws. Weedwhackers. Lawnmowers. Parties. Kids screaming. Parents yelling at kids. Kids yelling at parents. A neighbor blasting NPR from their garage. Drag racing at 11pm. Scooters. Bugs. More bugs. Bicycles. Birds.

Summer is constant noise. At least these are the summer noises of suburbia.

Summer in suburbia is definitely a mood. Something like a sitcom. Something that sort of feels like we’re still all living in 1960.

2.

Staring at the lake, or the ocean (better if it’s the ocean), is a lot like staring at the night sky. You’re staring into a vast emptiness, so vast and so empty your head feels clearer just by looking at it. Of course the ocean is not empty, there are plenty of things in it, things we know about and things we don’t want to know about. The night sky is the same way. Space is not empty. There are stars and moons and gases and planets and floating rocks (also known as asteroids).

But the ocean and space contain nothing of our world, in a sense (besides plastic and space junk, but that’s a subject for a later discussion). You look at it and realize there’s so much more. More silence. That there’s still something out there untouched by noise, untouched by tedium, something wild and wonderful still to be seen, that the door to Faerie is still open to those who are brave enough to look for it, and who are braver still to enter.

3.

So I’m sitting in the parking lot at the lake, right?  SUV pulls up, kids get out. One of the boys is like, “I didn’t know we had an ocean here!”

Hate to break it to you kid, but that ain’t the ocean.

4.

Something about the woods
something about a rain washed street under a cloudy moon
that first warm rain and
those first warm memories
I could swallow it and I could drink it down like some fell potion
that would make me remember
that would make me forget.

5.

You know what the benefit of writing at the lake is??? There’s no wifi. Sometimes you just got to go to extreme measures to get rid of distractions. Though extreme would probably be more like getting on a boat and sailing into the middle of the lake to avoid both distractions and interruptions. But hey, not all of us can afford a yacht.