Summer, the time of the river of work – the river of reading, the river of writing.
The work of summer, between the exam boards and Fresher’s Week.
Summer the time of true work, deep work. Summer, the time of Writing – deep writing. And Reading – the deepest reading. When we opened the Great Books. When we bent over them in study.
Summer, the time of wide reading. Of broad writing. Sunlight on our pages, as we read. Birdsong in our ears.
Summer’s time. The opening of summer. The unfolding of summer.
Summer’s broadening. Summer’s open doors.
The deep weeks. The hidden valleys of summer. Its secret places.
Summer work: it’s happiness. The happiness of having Time before us. Of throwing up our sails into the summer. Piloting our work like a sand-yacht. Catching great summer breaths. Across the open sands.
Tone-poem summer. Delius and Roedelius summer.
The work, ascending. The work, rising.
The opening of summer, when every academic can swoon back into the arms of Potential. Can believe that they, too, might be capable of Greatness.
The beginning of summer, when every academic can believe their work is World-Historical. When every academic believes they might be a Genius.
The start of summer, when every academic remembers again what they became an academic for. When every academic can put aside distraction. All that teaching! All that admin!
When every academic can dream of catching a summer wind. A summer breeze.
End of summer deadlines, far off. The annual conference, far off.
Summer work. Reaching eternal summer. Reaching the summer perpetuum. Propitious summer – that we knew for the first time. The full time academic’s summer, entirely different from the hourly pai academic’s summer.
Not the summer of panic. Not the summer of food banks. Not the summer of signing on. Not the summer of humiliation. The summer of going cap in hand to your parents, when you were too old to go cap in hand to your parents.
We remember it well: when summer used to be about poverty. Skint summers. Penniless summers. Signing-on summers. Compulsory jobsearch summers. Panic-attacks-thinking-about-our-future-life summers.
When summer used to be about building up to the big British Society for Continental Philosophy conference. Writing our papers, in between everything else. In between panic attacks.
Is it a writing a paper for a conference summer? A chapter for an anthology summer? A working on your book summer? Or all three?
Summer’s abandoned itself to summer. Summer’s slipped into summer. And it’s lifted you in its splistream.
Lifting your academic’s eyes from the business of term. From teaching and marking and the pettiness of administration. Lifting your gaze into summer skies.
Summer, the time when we busied ourselves with our great projects, our dream projects.
Our notetaking. What we write on summer pages.
Weeks, reading. Every day, more deeply. Weeks, looking. Weeks, finding.
The fragrant breath of summer, over the work. The trance of summer, over the work.
Sounding summer’s depths.
A few weeks. Throwing up our sails into the summer. Piloting our work like a sand-yacht. Catching great summer breaths. Across the open sands.
Even they can’t destroy the summer. Even they can’t dim this sun.
Lying on a summer hammock. Looking upwards.
Your encompassing summer love. For all things. Viewing it all with Summer Equanimity.
The great Lifting. The great Lightening.
Academics afloat in the lidos of summer. Academics sunning themselves in inflatables. Academics poolside. Academics reading in the shade.
Work in Progress 