To my great regret, I no longer know how to be lazy, and summer is no fun without sloth. Indolence requires patience—to lie in the sun, for instance, day after day—and I have none left. When I could, it was bliss. I lived liked the old Greeks, who knew nothing of hours, minutes, and seconds.
--Simic, NYRB.

The city in summer floated in a daze that moved otherwise sensible people to repeat endlessly the brainless greeting “Hot enough for ya? Ha-ha!” It was like the final joke before the meltdown of the world in a pool of sweat
---Arthur Miller

Thinking of the books I've brought back and the ones left high on the wardrobe, the music I've 'bought' but will never listen to, the ever growing lists of things still to be bought, watched, given attention, the reminders to live one's life, the scraps of profound words hastily jotted down in a notebook...it is all endless.

Summer has passed by in a flash. It seemed it was only starting when I left-bright, cloudless days, the Ashes just beginning, Wimbledon over and the discovery of closure, the waist-high grass and nettles and weeds outside St. Barnabas's church, silently catching the long shadows and last light as a porcelain-white Christ looks sadly down, well-worn paths in the park, as the green dries out to straw yellow and then inch-high stubble and dust.

And now I must mend my shoes, prepare for the long haul, the long hours of silence, buckle down and become serious. Fold your clothes, adjust your pace, find the right place for things, reassemble what order there is. Another summer over, in which you witness the miracle of the transformation of time, perfection and timelessness, bodies loosened, hands unclenched, the soft morning light on people's faces making them more beautiful than they really are, the sugars in plums, cherries, strawberries, thickening and expanding under the moonlight, words more measured, the laughter of children, the pink clouds of evening stretching above us, the last soft glow of understanding.

And when the sky has darkened you hear the last notes of a distant bird. The notes are clear and precise and then they slow down, as if going from song to plain words, the plainest words imaginable. How old this ritual, how ancient the tune? Does this bird know any other?

In the morning a pigeon darts from one roof to another. Jumps, rather than flies. As he lands on the garage's corrugated roof which is now turquoise from moss and debris and too much light, he opens his wings and they flutter like so many pages caught in a stiff breeze. An awkward and clumsy landing. Don't read too much into it and don't dwell on it.

All you need is time and you'll find yourself again, find yourself again in deep winter, north or north by north-west, without any lists or books or music and just enough food and thought, enough truth and enough heart  for a day.