Summerlands

That moment.

Remember?

The bell going.  On the last day.

That last day in school.  Time stretching out and no longer sure of what would happen, one lesson to the next.  The whole place is holding its breath, willing the moments along.  A sense of letting go finally, nine month's worth of clenched fist released. Perhaps it almost felt comfortable for you?  For the first time, perhaps, maybe?

And the bell goes.  And suddenly everyone's moving.  But in that moment, something shifts and changes -

And then the corridors are empty, the classrooms silent again and it's all over, all gone.  All the fears and troubles that seemed so huge and devouring, if you're lucky, they've gone, left behind and forgotten.  Old monsters and witches are just papier mache and left in the cupboard.  Paper teeth after all.  If you're lucky.

That sense of scattering, inexplicable because it's really just the same as any other Friday.  But still the feeling that everyone, no matter how old they are, is leaving in a different direction.  In my mind, it looks like a cheap TV crossfade, a double exposure making people vanish into the air like perfect ghosts.  Then there's only the rolling fields under the sunlight, empty and the silence of a school when everyone's gone, not coming back, this year is over.

And we all became summer ghosts, closer to our own idea of ourselves than anyone else's, just for a little while longer.  Six or seven weeks of misrule over our own hearts.





Some authors capture this moment beautifully.  For example:

The Summer Birds - Penelope Farmer
A literal summer of liminal transformation, dreamlike and impossible.  Not saying much more, but you'll be lucky to find a copy these days.

It - Stephen King
Despite what everyone thinks, it's not really about killer clowns.  It's about those perfect/monstrous summers when you learned who you could be...and then forgot all about it when school came around again.

Shadowland - Peter Straub
Not sure why this doesn't get more attention.  Cheap horror pulp cover, I guess.  A twice told memory of a long lost surreal summer in magical hell, told by an unreliable trickster narrator, about how he came to be a wandering unreliable trickster narrator.  "If you go through life with an unchipped heart, you won't get far."

I'm sure that there are classic literary examples.  But I'm all cheap dime store magic and second hand horror stories and I think it's how I'm happiest.