July letter (and photo essay)

On summer and the meaning of passion

Each year, I tell myself I’ll finally let myself enjoy summer. And this year, I finally do.

Koi pond, just outside the entrance to my mother-in-law’s kitchen.

I guess you know how this is. Especially in one’s middle years, the weight of accumulated responsibilities feels heavier, so heavy the temptation to work through warm languid days (despite them beckoning you to repose) becomes harder to resist.

Reflecting on the Tarot, the cycle of wands reminds this to us as an inevitable result of passion. Passion sparks the will into action in the ace of wands, leads through all the fortunate winds and the dance of our will’s development throughout the next eight cards, then leads us to the moment of overburden — and promise of respite — in the ten.

When it’s too hot in the morning, I sit here. The plant on the table in the center is Patchouli.

Thinking of responsibilities not as obligations or as burdens, but rather as the result of our passions, helps put my own weighty accumulation into better perspective.

I’m a publisher and an editor not because I’m obliged to be, but rather because my passions led me there. Thus, the countless responsibilities which have come along with this work — and the Sisyphean nature of any completed task — are burdens in the way a child on a father’s shoulders is a burden. Sure, it’s heavy, but it’s only too heavy when you forget how your passion led to its creation.

View across the Koi pond (and that large Japanese maple) to our balcony. Very large and quite full Hazel tree to the right in foreground.

Relationships, likewise. Your passion sparks a connection to someone, and that passion results in the love of friendship or marriage, and that comes with countless responsibilities which are best not shirked. You feel obliged to those you love only when the passion for them feels distant; otherwise, it’s hard to think of such things as obligations at all.

My husband built this strawberry tower from reclaimed wood.

Of course, we cannot only ever rely on passion, and that’s what the cycle of wands reminds us. To believe and act otherwise, to do things only when one “feels like it,” is to instead mistake will for desire, the wands for the cups. But passion is not desire, despite being a conflation heavily encouraged and abused by advertising. We desire peace, and health, and love; we are passionate about creating peace, the conditions of health, the space for love.

Which means passion is also honor and discipline and self-restraint. I’m passionate about my gym work, about getting increasingly stronger, about filling out my body with as much muscle as it will endure. So, I go when I really don’t want to, avoid trash food despite loving the temporary high it grants, and push myself no matter how comfortable I’d really rather be.

View inside the greenhouse. Damiana, basil, and peppers line the left side, tomatoes, more peppers, and epazote on the right. Two watermelons, two lemon trees, a tea tree, and cannabis in the back. Hidden from view behind the tomatoes: a sassafras and a moringa tree

And as with my garden — that “burdensome” passion! More mornings than not, I’d much rather not water the greenhouse and my scores of potted plants, nor prune the tomatoes, nor re-pot yet another rare plant my passion led me to grow. Yet I do, not just because I’d loathe to see a die-off of desiccated plants and the wasted effort that would mean. I do so to honor myself as well as them, to make good on the earlier spark of passion which led me to start so gods-damned many of them.

So, it’s not that getting older means accumulating more responsibilities; rather, that getting older means an accumulation of passions. I become more passionate the older I get, and those passions require more work and discipline to honor them.

Peppers, crimson amaranth, red sunflowers, fennel; plus some corn, beans, cucumbers, and a myriad of others

Still, there is the problem of summer; or, rather, the problem of not letting myself enjoy the summer as much as I’d like. And perhaps passion is the obstacle here, or rather the lack of passion. It’s not that I’ve not yet “allowed” myself its enjoyment, but rather that I’ve not become passionate enough about enjoying it.

But one doesn’t really become passionate about a season, but rather the things done best when it comes. Bright and hot days aren’t the best for being inside, working. They’re better for dreaming up new passions, for feeling the body in all its strength and weakness, and for talking about everything and nothing at all with those you’re most passionate about.

From bottom: Thai basil, moonflower, Japanese maple, eucalyptus, and a few highly productive cucumbers. Those peanuts to the left are for the ravens.

So, too, the long, warm nights are best enjoyed in reverie with others. Dinners with friends taste best in these evenings as the scent of summer blooms from the garden wafts endlessly past your table. Sex, I also find, is my favorite in the summer months — when your body and the body of your lover are most awake to the world and its sensuous call.

Even lifting and the sauna feel better during these days, despite the difficulty I’ve lately had making as much time for it as I’d like, and for the same reasons as for sex. I love the feeling of sweat dripping down my skin after extreme effort, the heat from the body matching the heat of the air. Passion, anyway, is most often described as fire, as are the wands in the tarot, as is the sun warming all of life around me.

blueberries!

I’ve always understood this about the summering, but this year I think I’ve finally let myself enjoy it. Afternoons and evenings with friends, hours of sunlight soaking into ever-darkening skin. Slow mornings with strong coffee among bee-swarmed blossoms, long playful nights with my husband, and endless hours stretching between them during which even the hardest work feels less heavy in the light of remembered passion.

Another view of the garden plot and greenhouse.

(PS: If you liked this essay, you might really like my book, A People’s Guide to Tarot: A Primer for Everyone).