41 The End of Summer

I have hiked much in the mountainous regions and here I am again, on my bicycle, amongst the orchards and fields near my home. The sun is low on the horizon and soon it will fall into the sea. The uncultivated brown fields are still covered with withered thorns but other fields have already been prepared for sowing. The furrows are fresh and the dark soil has been shaped into a huge chocolate bar. Sprinklers are refreshing the soil and only the broad paths are as yet one gigantic sand box, and that is how they will remain until the arrival of the first rain of the season. It is very hot and the humidity is heavy. I pedal on looking around me and suddenly, next to the road – an entire field of Chazavim (squill). I stop suddenly as if struck by lightening: summer is over – the Chazav is blooming.

I remember the childhood feeling of time, or more correctly the timeless feeling in which it seems that summer lasts almost eternally. Backwards it extended to the distant past before the beginning of the long summer vacation and forwards – it seemed that it would last forever. Even today I feel that self same refusal to believe that that eternal present – of sea, swimming pool and watermelon – could end. True, the calendar says that it is already September and soon the holidays will be upon us, but that is nonsense. The calendar is just so many paper pages – and the sun is the sun. Therefore when I am suddenly confronted with the white sign, the Chazav, standing tall by the side of the road, I get all excited. Because the Chazav is reality. A reminder that can no longer be denied: Summer is over.

When it is warm and I am in shorts and an undershirt, I find it hard to imagine the cold winter, and in winter I can't imagine the summer heat. I know that the seasons come and go. Nevertheless I refuse to believe that a different time of the year is possible at any moment. How does the change take place? How does the arrow of time pass from one point to another? I reject any such possibility – but then the Chazav confronts me and says: here, it has already happened. Summer is over.