The air hangs heavy and warm, steeping in the scent of oak. It has just rained, and water drips off the tree branches onto the lime green moss growing in the uneven cracks of the sidewalk. High up in the trees, cicadas croak their summer songs. Robins and mourning doves sing their replies. Two people sway back and forth on their porch swing. The sun catches them in a yellow glow. Their laughter, melodic and carefree, tumbles over the cobblestones. An old man pedals past on his bike, sporting a red bucket hat with bright yellow rubber ducks glued onto it. It’s not uncommon to see such whimsy here. Nearby, someone has decorated their tree with toadstools, fairy doors, and little figurines. It’s easy to imagine a child behind it, but it’s equally possible an adult did it. I suspect it was the former, given that the Little Free Library in their yard is brimming with a colorful collection of children’s books.
Even nature seems to be at play. Tangerine-colored lilies grow wildly by the sidewalk, hydrangeas spill out over the lawns, moss clings quietly to a rooftop, and gardens edge into alleyways. Their disregard for our built structures creates a beauty beyond anything we could design. Like the little figurines nestled in the base of the tree, we are small architects wrestling an architecture too large to comprehend.
At dusk, pinpricks of light bob up and down as fireflies catch drifts of air, chasing after each other. Sometimes the wind turns, and scents that evaporated too quickly in the daytime heat float by. The cool evening air carries the smell of night-blooming flowers and mulch. To watch the day unfold these little mysteries feels like peering into another world, separate from our clocks and schedules and routines. Instead, there is ungoverned life, determined in its proliferation and unabashed by our observance. Perhaps if we observe for long enough, the self begins to quiet, absorbed softly into the summer air.