confessions of a communications slacker

Well, I'm still here! How are you all doing? I've been ex-communicado and it's been, in the Irish slang, "brilliant". I guess I really ought not to beat myself up, since compared to most people most of the time (the statistical average, in other words) I'm usually pretty good at keeping in touch with people. And really, what is more healthy for an aspect of yourself (be it physical, mental, etc) than a dose of change, a bit of something completely different, a break? So that's how I'm rationalizing the fact that I've not been the greatest at keeping in touch with folks I miss and care about, and I won't be made to feel bad about it.

Today is a hot, hot day and I've returned to North River after two days off spent on the North Shore. I was in the company of friends, one in particular being an Irish musician travelling through the area, who has given me reason to worry about what people might say. For the most part I'm a pretty chilled, low-gossip-quotient kind of resident, more likely to listen to a friend's scandalous tales of summer romance than to create them, but since a week now I've been the one who steals kisses, dances in the rain, and swims in the moonlight. And it's been fantastic, so. Although, as Paul Mac said, someone should have warned me about hanging around with fiddle-players, since you get to the party and they jump right in and play, but that's quite alright with me. I've been more than content just to [fill in the blank: listen to him play, lie on the beach, play some frisbee, make a meal] while the long days pass.

Cape Breton in the summertime is quite a magical place all around. It doesn't seem to matter what the tourist numbers are, if they are down or up--if you're willing to be open to a quiet beauty that sneaks in to everything and makes each moment golden then you'll find this place charms you. Though that sounds incredibly cliche (along the lines of "Kumbaya", whoever invented it) it is true. I was strolling along a cart track last night, heading to the ocean, flipping a frisbee between my hands, thinking thoughts to myself, taking a bit of a break from the people and the house, and could feel anxieties falling away, a bit like something crusty you've been soaking in hopes to clean. I don't know who thinks segregating human life from nature is a good thing, because in all my experience nature is where I go to re-realize the truth, that there is a bigger force out there, that it cares about field grasses and blueberries and honeysuckle just as much as it cares about us silly human beans. And that in the grand scheme of things, it's OK to be confused or sad or tired--or heaven forbid, content--because life is continually mutuating, surprising, changing. What is worrisome in your life right now will change into something else--sorrows become beauty, children become adults, gardens become the harvest.

I guess we all just do the best we can to count our blessings, make changes happen, and live in the moment.

So with that, I'm going to take this sleep-deprived, memory-stuffed little head outdoors and maybe swim, maybe listen to some of the new Dixie Chicks album, most likely drink some cool drink with ice in it.

What are the lessons you're learning this summer? What are the things you're doing that differ from the daily? How goes summer with you?