There I was ,sipping Belgian beer squinting under the “summer” sun in London. “Don’t like the sun?” He asked. “I’d rather have winter, than a summer that pretends to be there but never commits.” He stared at me like I was mad, they all do.
I knew I sounded like I was already drunk, but my point was as clear as the very rare clear skies of London.What I really wanted to tell him,or them drowned in my own throat with that bottle of beer along with my Asian hesitations.
Ill never tell them that there is the kind of summer I wanted, and maybe the kind of love I was secretly waiting for. That if not these, I’d rather have winter.
What I wanted to tell him was that I grew up in the kind of summers that burn your skin and dry up your thoughts, the kind that gives you thirst unquenchable by the coldest beer you ever know. Where I came from,the summer sun grill the pavement and walking barefoot would burn your soles and your insides. The summers that make you sweat away all the loneliness of rainy days.The kind of sun that makes the sea the deepest blue and the sky a kaleidoscope.This is the kind of love I knew, the kind that is relentless,burning and a little maddening.The kind of warmth that lets you dwell in beauty and the heat that ages you gracefully with its beating. The kind of love that changes the course of ones life, the kind that elates you and shatters your bones when its lost.The kind that knows it is actually love and wants to be there and sit still. The kind you remember.
What is the point of sitting under the sun but feeling the biting chill on your fingertips?If I would sit under the sun, Id like it to feel it burning so I know it is the sun.. the same as if I’m going to be loved or love I want it to drive us a little mad so I know that it is love.
I’d rather wallow in winter,one of the things I secretly like about this place, in the grey skies I have come to love, in the icy rain that makes the city miserable, than to sit under the “summer sun” in a jacket. To wrap myself in a melancholic blanket as the snow falls outside and dream of the real summer sun where I use to thrive.Yes, maybe I’m a little mad but maybe some people need to know what summer really feels like..and what love might be actually all about.
