Last fall, before Thanksgiving, my dad made a wooden Christmas tree for the front of the house. Once the fall and winter holidays were over, we still had the pole upright in the yard. I turned it into a Maypole.
Now today is the summer Solstice (at least in the hemisphere where I reside) and I changed the Maypole into a Solstice-pole. The Maypole had a rainbow of colors, but this has warm colors instead—shades of orange, yellow, a bit of red. Some ribbon is transparent, some is thin. They all look lovely in the breeze. Dad made a sun out of a scrap of wood and I added a strand of sunflowers.
My husband and I like to look out the front window and see the ribbons fluttering. The summer sun will no doubt wring the color from it, but I’m going to keep it up through August. Even in the blistering heat, it’ll be pretty. And I’m more than happy to be “the house with all the ribbons.”
Current recommends for summer days (or winter days even if you’re in that other hemisphere)—
Another substack—The Scarecrow Letters. To quote her about page: “the focus will be on the interconnection of creativity and spirit (mostly) and the realities of our physical selves as we cope. I will also talk about poetry: nuts and bolts, inspirations, and practicalities.”
A few YouTube channels—Pop Culture Detective: Everyone Everywhere Needs Waymond Wang, Pillar of Garbage: Fire in Space—the Acolyte and Confirmation Bias, and Quality Culture: Into the Wild and the Urge to Escape into Nature. Also, you can watch the Solstice from Stonehenge here.
A couple of podcasts— Imaginary Worlds: Swept Away by Romantasy. And what I listen to as a podcast, but apparently you can watch on YouTube—The Rest Is Entertainment with Richard Osman and Marina Hyde.
A book—Make Your Art No Matter What by Beth Pickens (who was in conversation with Austin Kleon). Why do I like this book? This quote,
Here is my thesis: You are going to die. I will, too. We have to make choices about time because we have the finite gift of one existence. You should make your art.
And this book—Hamnet: a Novel of the Plague by Maggie O’Farrell. This book is beautiful and sad and magical. After reading it I had a moment when I thought maybe I should give up writing because I will never write anything that good.
So in spite of anxieties inspired by the demons of comparisons, I took part in Story-a-Day May. Here’s a rough draft of something rather silly I wrote on day 4. It’s not finished, but I want to come back to it. Thanks for reading!
Time ran differently on the many city streets. Lolly Pagaginni ran down Spruce Street at five o’clock, and she was quick, but it was still midnight when she turned onto Central Avenue. She cursed a bit. A person had to be good and calculating hours to get anywhere on time. It’s true some people lived their whole lives on one street. It was just easier and if you walked long enough, you could find most of what you needed, and what you couldn’t find, you lived without.
But Lolly was always crossing the intersection where time crawling met up with time flying. It was a miracle to avoid an accident there, time crashing into itself and sending people backwards or forwards, giving them or losing them years. Luckily, Lolly was quick on her feet and well-practiced at keeping her head on straight. So she was lucky enough, she thought, to live on Avenue M where noon happened three times a day and to work on Willow Boulevard where noon came only four times a week.
Lolly worked at the front desk of the Blue Hotel. As far as her family back on Avenue M was concerned, she’d worked there for only a couple of years, but at work she’d just been given a pin for ten years of service. “How is that?” her mother had asked, seeing the pin on Lolly’s lapel.
Because Lolly was famous for her patience, she smiled. “Ma, the same reason you never leave our street. It’s different out there. You know that.”
“Never did understand it.”
“No one does.”
“It’s ‘cause we’re cursed!” her father shouted from his over-stuffed green chair in the corner.
Lolly just nodded. She knew better than to pursue an argument her father wanted. Did he mean they were cursed not to understand or cursed to live in the timeful city? She used to ask that question whenever he brought it up. But she’d learned long ago that the difference didn’t matter to him.
Now dashing into the Blue Hotel, Lolly double checked the date on the calendar (for as good as she was, it paid to double check), hung her purple coat on coat rack, and let herself into the space behind the front desk. The manager was dozing in the chair, a cigar resting on his chest.
“Morning, Hamish,” she said. It must’ve been a quiet night for his cigar to be down to almost a nub.
He grunted and woke up. “Lolly-lu!” He sat up too quickly and what was left of the cigar hit the floor and rolled under the wall of mail slots, where it would remain. “You know what today is, girl?”
“Monday,” she said. “I checked.”
“No! I mean, yes. But it’s more than that. Didn’t I tell you?”
She paused. She’d been looking at the registration book on the counter and seeing if the pen on the chain still had ink. There were more new names than she expected. She didn’t bother pointing out that he was forever not telling her things and then acting surprised she didn’t know. She had joked with friends that she should get him a key chain that read, didn’t I tell you?
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“The mayor’s coming.”
Lolly thought she couldn’t be surprised. Everything and anything happened at the Blue Hotel, especially at night. She expected stories of impromptu weddings and crimes of passion or thefts and hauntings or drunken rows between conference attendees and event planners trying to run out without paying. She expected cats rescued from air vents and poltergeist handcuffed to the radiator. She expected guests attacking the cleaning staff, dying in the pool, or finding true love at the bar. She didn’t expect the mayor.
Who even was the mayor? She had no time for politics. “Why?” she asked. “He…or she…want a room?” Surely the mayor stayed at the Floridonian if a hotel was needed.
“He.” Hamish stood and brushed crumbs off his shirt. “And he don’t want no room. He’s got a hundred or more of his own rooms to stay in. No, girl. Get some sense. Haven’t you been watching the news?”
She blinked. Why on earth would she do a thing like that?
A guest then turned up at the desk asking for their mail. Hamish grunted and handed it over. After the guest scurried away with their fliers and envelopes covered in strange marks, Hamish turned back to Lolly who still stood by the registry book. “He wants to clean up the city. He’s been shouting about it for weeks, or months. Years maybe depending what street you’re on. Anyways. He wants to clean up the city. That’s what he’s been hollerin about.”
Ah. It was time for another sweep of the homeless and strippers and dealers and reprobates. Willow Boulevard had its fair share of all that, she supposed. “Where’s he going to put the homeless this time?” she asked. Sometimes folks were lucky and got put in the Lariat Hotel where social workers helped them straighten out their lives. Sometimes they got put into camps on the outskirts of the city, where time twisted around on itself. That was a hard place. You could end up younger than you thought or end up dead, aged before you were born. Citizens often protested such treatment, but it was hard to protest on time when on some streets the clean up happened yesterday and on other streets it happened six months back or ten years.
Hamish pulled open a drawer and took out a tin of breath mints. “There may be some of that, but no, he’s aiming to clean up time.”
“Clean up time?”
“Make it uniform. He says time has gotten out of control. It runs riot through this city, making it impossible to get things done, wasting tax payer dollars in clocks and calendars and time training.”
“Time isn’t a vagrant. You can’t send your cops out to grab it and drag it into a van and take it where you please.”
Hamish chuckled and popped three mints into his mouth. “Like to see him try. No, but he’s gonna do his best to straighten out time, at least in some parts of the city, you know where the high and mighty want to have meetings and memos and a consistent tax day.”
“Why come here then? Who’s high and mighty round here?”
“Lolly. I got you here because you’re smart. Come now. He just wants this as his backdrop for his press event. You know how them politickers like to be photographed here.”
“But if he wants time more polished up and set right for his sort, why here? I don’t believe for two seconds on Main Street that he cares that our guests get to where they’re going in a timely fashion.”
“And right you are not to believe that. No. But Lolly, girl.” Hamish waved his arm, gesturing at the lobby behind the bards protecting the front desk. “He blames us.”
For once Lolly was too stunned to ask her question.
“That’s right,” Hamish continued. “This is why you should watch the news, girl. So when they’re planning to come for you, you’re not taken by surprise. Now, that mayor says the problem with time comes straight from this hotel. Why look at the folks who stay here, the reasons the cops got to come, the clouds that are always right here blocking the sun from shining in the rooms. Lolly, girl, I’ve never seen you look surprised. But hold onto your hat, or in your case parasol, because that mayor is going to stand right in front the Blue and demand its demolition. I’ll be surprised if he doesn’t want us in it when the wrecking ball shows up. Hell, he might bring it with him today. I hear he has one of his very own. A big wrecking ball he keeps shiny and bright and with his name engraved on it, Ed Evanneer. For some folks that’s the last thing they’re ever going to see.”
“He wouldn’t. He can’t. This is the Blue! Sure, it’s rough, but where else are these people going to go?”
“To hell, to hear him tell it. Anyways, Lolly, girl. Get yourself ready. He’s coming and you can’t stop him.”
That’s all for now. Thanks for reading. And if you want to support the art and the writing, there are ways!
And my blog!
Happy Solstice
Based on this excerpt, Day 4 was a very good day! I look forward to reading more. 😘
Love it! Love it! Love it!