Summertime

There is a saying in Mallorca that goes: ‘A s’estiu tothom viu’, which literally means, ‘everyone lives in the summer’. So in theory, living is easier, even if you are homeless, are ill, are jobless, or can’t stand your partner or boss. We are all included in the blossoming of summer.

Let’s consider the positive aspects of summer. If you are homeless, you won’t die of the cold and can sleep on the soft sand of a nearby beach. If you are ill, symptoms and pain often lessen as the body slows down under the implacable heat. And the same goes for worrying about your lack of work or putting up with your partner or boss, if you have one. Your brain is also lethargic and drowsy so it has no energy for stress or arguments. You drift along, weighted by the plenitude of the Mallorcan summer, thinking you have at last achieved some Zen detachment from the burdens of life. Days are long, there’s time for everything, above all for contemplating your navel. Autumn and winter are so far away.

On the downside, mosquitoes are relentless, as is the screech of traffic in the city. Noise invades all. Drunk young tourists throw themselves off hotel balconies in the resorts or leave you no room on the beach. The harsh sun is a spotlight on all defects, human and otherwise. Frayed nervous systems finally unravel at 35 degrees, so more shouting goes on in apartments in the early hours of the morning in June, July and August than during the rest of the year. We aren’t all drugged by somnolency. And then there is the exposing of our body. Many of us, especially women, wish we hadn’t fed it so well during the winter months and regret not having dragged it to the gym. Too late. You either flaunt it next to the slyph-like beauties on the beach and pretend not to give a damn or you cover your batwings and sit in the shade.

But there are the mountain villages and the bougainvillea flaunting their colours over white walls, and the terraced slopes where the silver backed leaves of the olive trees glint in the sun.The hard blue sky becomes dark velvet in the evening and is reflected in the lolloping waves of the Mallorcan sea. Parts of paradise still remain on this island. I feel privileged to live here and anxious about the preservation of this vulnerable paradise. But as the song goes in the George Gershwin musical, Porgy and Bess, ‘summertime and the living is easy…’

thewordsofheathersmith

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