The Summer to Come

Think of the summer, postgraduates! Warm yourselves with thoughts of the summer!

Think of the end of teaching and the opening out of summer, postgraduates. Think of the final Board of Studies, the final Board of Examiners, and the expansiveness of summer.

Think of summer flight, borne by summer winds, postgraduates. Think of setting sail into the summer, of catching the summer breeze.

Think of the near-empty summer campus, excerpt for a few foreign students, postgraduates. Except for a few academics gathered for summer conferences.

Think of our philosophy accommodation, office doors open, postgraduates. Of wide-open windows. Of the wind-stirred blinds. Of desk fans moving drowsily from side to side.

Think of your summer studies, postgraduates. Of your summer reading. Were you going to tackle The Science of Logic this year? The entirety of Kierkegaard, including the sermons? Were you going to eat your Aristotle greens and finally tackle the Metaphysics? And what were you going to write, this summer? What was going to be your writing project, this summer.

Think of looking back through your notebooks, postgraduates. Of letting your thoughts assemble. Letting them come calmly together, as light poured through them. As warmth buoyed them, lifted them.

Think of summer thoughts, postgraduates. Summer ideas! That seem to float upwards. That seem to rise into the sky, like fire balloons. Summer thoughts, rising. Summer ideas, rising. But casually. Neglectfully. Without paying any attention to themselves. Without trying. Without sweat.

Summer, postgraduates! The opposite of our Organisational Management winter! The opposite of our White-Witch winter. Our Moominland-in-November winter.

Let it burn in your hearts, postgraduates! Let it warm your hearts! The coming summer. The summer that still hasn’t arrived. The summer condition –without beginning and without end.

Draw strength from it: the inexhaustible summer, postgraduates! The summer that you’ll never be able to use up! The summer that never ends! That is always but a dream of summer – the summer of inexhaustible potential. In which great things could be done. No: could be undone. Think of the undoing of things – of all things. Of the idling of summer.

The idling summer, postgraduates: think of that. Weeks without mooring. Those weeks of summer voyage. Summer languor. Summer luxuriance. The great summer stretching of limbs. Under the summer vault!

Think of your eternal youth, postgraduates. Your perennial faith. Your perpetual beginning, that’s never begun, that’s forever ahead. Of your secret childhood, that hasn’t happened yet. That hasn’t been crushed in you.

 Think of the summer of hope – of idled hope, postgraduates. Of idled work. Of idled reading – and writing. Of work without work, which was more about unworking. About unpicking the stitches.  

Not work, but the contemplation of work, postgraduates. Not work, but study detached from work, fallen out of step with work. That remains out of phase with anything productive …

When time seems to lose all direction, postgraduates. When time seemed to sink into itself – lie down. Think of time pools. Of time hazes, like heat over summer roads. Think of the air turned thick. O, postgraduates. Of the air turned runny.

Summon it up inside you, postgraduates: the memory of summer, that is also the expectation of summer. Of the summer to come.