In Praise of August

Even thinking has its seasons. In October the mind is snappy as a soldier, alert, quickstepping; it plans to storm the battlements. In February it concentrates upon itself, shrinks and grows depressed. In May it rouses itself, gets wild ideas and is suddenly persuaded that it is young again. In July it knows better, and starts to trouble itself with questions of who it really is, where it is really going, what really happened to that play it was going to write.

But in August the mind calms down, becomes receptive, even creative, enjoys the nothing that is there. If it takes a holiday, it is glad to worry about the kinds of problems that arise on holidays: compost heaps, car washes, the location of a fruit stand, fennel. If it stays home, it is glad for the silence, glad for the spiders walking like aerialists between the posts on the porch fence, glad to walk in the city on a Sunday evening, when the windows of the office buildings glow rose-gold in sheets, and the traffic lights wink where there is no traffic.

The mind takes things in; August is its haying season. It becomes an eager observer. It seeks balance, like an artist. It finds pleasure in orderly things: mystery books and baseball games. It pays attention to the children. It likes to talk with friends, unurgently. The mind actually begins to like itself in August. After it makes all the obligatory jokes about psychiatrists leaving town, it feels pretty good, almost sound.

Which may in a way explain the bathtub race and Lizzie Borden Liberation Day and all the other otherworldly activities that go to make up the month. Only a people truly comfortable with themselves would behave that foolishly. Somewhere meeting in the mind these days is a convention, not of Elvis fans, but of all the good and gentle moments, the dreamy conversations, the hushed confidences, the hours before months and seasons were named, and we had ourselves to ourselves. Good old porch. Good old spiders. It's the sound, don't you think? Or the light, or the heat, or the space. --By Roger Rosenblatt. Reported by Jack E. White/Chicago and Richard Woodbury/Los Angeles