Leaning Into Summer

"Leaning into the heat and quiet of summer." A friend of mine wrote that as her Facebook status today. It made me long for the days, not that long ago really, when you'd write something on FB and it would stay there until you felt done with it. Your status could last, as long as you felt comfortable with it. It accompanied you, like a shadow whose color you got to choose. Meanwhile, you could continue to post more ephemeral comments, current events, links to your favorite old television shows, 37 different sources of the same fleeting political moment, what your amazingly precocious children said at the breakfast table. Now, there really is no status line. Whatever is most current defines you. The split second moment is all. If you lean with a friend's shadow into the heat and quiet of summer, be prepared to have it yanked out from under you without notice. Indeed, while I was still meditating on this beautiful posting of my friend walking home from work tonight, "leaning," as it were, into the thick and ample arms of the first genuinely hot, humid evening here, she was at home typing, "Beautiful green salad with shrimp." Now she is probably listening to the quiet hum of her dishwasher cleaning away the last traces of that post, while I am still sitting here musing about how one leans into summer heat, wondering what happens to the fireflies. The only humming I'm hearing is that of the mosquitoes, who are absolutely loving the thick and ponderous air of midsummer.

"Leaning into summer." I confess to being a Titanic fan, not just of the historic episode and the physical ship, but of the fascinating moment enshrined on celluloid and its digital counterparts. The movie. Leonardo and Kate. Kate on the prow of the great doomed luxury liner in that brief moment before fate takes over, when for just a few minutes it seems rich and poor can mingle, the stateroom and the below-decks fall in love; leaning off the prow, the air will hold them. Ah. But we know how that ends, both the film and the moment in history. At least we got a few good movies from the moment.

But today, this one unique moment in time right now, we are leaning into summer from the prow of another boat, a fleet of boats actually, also in the grip of forces larger than those humans who wait on their decks. The flotilla that was to set out from Greece toward Gaza is being held in the ports of Greece by authorities. After weathering sabotage and delays and threats from several governments, Greece announced today that they are refusing to allow the ships to leave their waters. Netanyahu has been courting Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou for months now, and this is his prize. Here's a link to a good article on how this all came about from the Israeli news source Haaretz and another perspective from Al Jazeera.

The American ship was named "The Audacity of Hope." Though an outright take-off on the second volume of President Obama's pre-presidential memoir, it was more a tribute to the spirit of the Reverend Martin Luther King; Obama's administration has been blunt in warning Americans not to join the flotilla. One has to wonder what his part was in the conversations between Netanyahu and Papandreou. Would they have held the ships without American consent?

I am very sad. Palestine is once again let down and her people left to suffer. What audacity, what hope?

Later added link: More on the audacity of hope