Summer seems to just begin with temperature finally rising in August. Under a locust tree on the riverside, you can't see where the water flow comes from: the river makes a turn at Gallup Park, grows wide and looks like a lake. Winds are strong: their wings beat on the tree top and in the water, rustling leaves and slapping waves against the riverbank. The rustles of leaves and the slaps of waves sound like a clock, ticking to a stubborn rhythm in your ears. It was in one rustle of leaves or slap of waves like this that the first wrinkle, fine and light, crept upon your then-still-youthful face and gray appeared among your cascading dark hair escaping your immediate notice - you are so ignorant that you can't tell when it happened. It was during a visit to your parents after an absence of six years that your heart felt a hundred small acute pains as if a mirror had shattered within, as that image printed on your brain, middle aged, robust and mighty, was violently broken, while your moist eyes quietly followed them around and watched them going about life in a different way now. And only when you looked at those old black-white photos, did you realize how beautiful and young your parents used to be - you were, perhaps, too little to know then, nor could you have remembered. On the photos, you were wearing a badge of Chairman Mao, with fat cheeks and a bundle of short hair shooting skyward - you didn't even have enough hair and your mom had to put some of hers to make it. But now you know, some day, in another rustle of leaves or slap of waves, your legs will drag too. And with each leaf rustling and wave slapping, your first slowed step is coming closer. Upon the stage, say for several decades each, and perhaps for one or two hundred million years together as a species, what does a second, an afternoon or a summer mean? Still, there you are, upon the stage, no matter how poor an actor, you got to play. Lucky are this black locust and that horned lark singing on its branches without a consciousness. Lucky is the jumping carp that spends all its life in this small water, content. Lucky are also the swans swimming effortlessly along the river and always feeling they are pretty. Unfortunate and doomed are those who are aware of lofty mountains and the majesty of oceans, but don't have the capability or strength to get there. The wooden post trail in Parker Mill Park is still wet from yesterday's rain, and there are fallen leaves scattering here and there. You are a bit alarmed, and look around: green still dominates the woods. Maybe it's just the storm.
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