Justin’s comment that Summer is almost over reminded me of an article I have clipped out and stuck to my wall. It’s written by James Lileks, the Star Tribune’s daily quirk guy who fills column inches with rambling, non-news-related rants... sound familiar? Since both Maine and Minnesota are on the 45th parallel, I’ll share this for your enjoyment. This was from August 1st, 1994, before the Strib picked him up:

Enjoy the lazy, hazy days of August; drink in the sky, winter is nigh.

OK, that’s it! Summer’s over! Out of the pool and into your sweaters!

Well, not yet. We’ve all of August to go, and isn’t this the month when summer feels eternal? June is fresh, July is noisy, but August is the slow humid droning month where summer sits in the middle of the road like a dog in a small dead town. August is when the weather turns into thick syrup; August is when the clock always seems to read 3 in the afternoon. August is summer after it has run out of ideas. It can get so hot and boring we almost wish for fall, just to give us some relief.

That, of course, is madness. September is kind enough, but once it has its foot in the door you realize it is selling Winter. Don’t answer the knock. Don’t even look out the window.

No, summer isn’t over yet. To any kid, there is the whole undiscovered land of another month ahead. But this one feel different; there’s School, a clammy, dust-breathing beast, waiting to awaken at the end of the month. In a couple of weeks the papers will start running ads for long pants and pencil holders. The grownups are getting ready to beat some order into your anarchic afternoons. Thirty days left: it sounds like a long time, but then it dawns on you: only four more Saturdays.

You can feel it coming; you can feel it ending.

In a way, it’s ridiculous to worry about summer ending, what with so large a portion still due. It’s like worrying about supper before you’ve finished lunch. But unless you start to prize summer now, it’s wasted and gone before you know it. A little panic is in order. It’s time to do the things you always associate with summer, but never end up doing.

Such as lying in the grass. Really. The other night I walked out into my yard; it was a warm night with a moon so hard and bright the whole world looked as though it was dreaming of noon. The neighborhood dogs were busy warning the moon, shooing it away; a cloud would draw over the moon and the dogs would fall silent, satisfied. AND-DON’T-COME-BACK!

But it did. The clouds held the moon like a secret they couldn’t keep. I laid on the ground and looked up, searching for constellations, reminding myself that I don’t know any constellations, and contented myself with identifying the Big Dipper. The grass felt soft and familiar, a sweet blanket over the stern bed of the earth. I spotted a satellite making an urgent swing past my patch of the planet. I laid there until the mosquitoes were working on extracting a second quart, and then I went indoors.

With reluctance. I couldn’t remember the last time I simply dropped to the ground and drank in the night. It seemed I did it all the time when I was a kid. The adults never did it; they sat in chairs. Apparently you’re supposed to graduate from grass to the patio. Maybe when you get old it’s hard to get up. Maybe you figure that you’ll be on your back in the ground soon enough, and you’ll take a seat until then, thank you.

A poll of friends indicated that none of them had flopped on the ground once this summer. The reasons varied, but everyone seems too busy doing Mandatory Summer Things to do something as simple as Nothing. There was the gym after work, the requisite barbecue, the bike trip, the usual yuppie litany of pleasure-as-duty that equates activity with meaning.

Well, nothing makes the time pass faster than cramming it with motion. The best way to spend summer is to stuff it to the brim with indolence. Go outside. Lay down. Do nothing. Do not make a production of it; do not study astronomical charts so you will know the name of every star. If you don’t have a yard, find a park in the day and watch the clouds – there is nothing to equal the sight of a high range of mountains boiling and unraveling in the wind, or the broad edge of a front steaming into sight and claiming the sky for its own. Whatever is up there is worth your attention.

Savor what’s left, and it will take its time leaving. Spend your time right, and there are fewer regrets when it’s gone. Find your version of Nothing and do it. And then say goodbye at Labor Day and get on with fall. Doesn’t matter if the leaves and the snow cover the earth; you know what’s down there. You know how it feels.