I don't care for the late summer air.. too thick, too muggy, too mucky, and too intolerable..

However regardless of the hot dog days and nights of summer, there is something else in the air..

Memories of yesterday.. years gone by that seem to travel through the mind in the flash of a light, or in the wink of a young girl's eye on the edge of a warm moon filled beach..

Something in that thick air that brings a swell of memories back to the faint of heart and hard hearted alike.. Something that reminds you of easier times.. Simpler days.. pre-trouble. Pre-stress.. pre-migraines. Even if those olden summer days are glorified too much, you can grow awfully fond of them..

How many nights spent looking at a summer sky and dreaming of the future--one that never really ended up like you wanted it nor became what you thought it would.. How many of those past summer nights in August did you sweat the start of school? How many evenings spent latched on to those last days of summer .. desperately holding on to whatever final fireflies you can catch before cooler nights came? How many hours spent with friends dreading the end of free nights and days.. ?

Adulthood changes most of everything quickly. More than kids and teenagers (sometimes 20 somethings) think it will. But in only a few short gasps of air, the corn crops dry up, the stars begin to vanish in a thick haze, and those long warm country roads get lonely with falling leaves and cold waves..

The summer can be appreciated by looking at it through the prism of time.. Or the prison of time. We are trapped in a maze with hands of a clock creeping quickly behind us.. And with each summer's beginning and ending, everything starts to blend together in August haze.

Grade school notebooks.. high school proms.. Senior graduation.. college entrance exams.. Wedding days.. Long hours at work..

Life goes from one extreme to another..

But in that summer haze of adulthood, do we lose the places we come from? Do they vanish into thick hot air never to be heard from again?

I still recall that summer night I turned 21 .. September of 2001.. Where did that night go? Staying awake all night with friends until the sunrise..? Why couldn't a night like that last forever..

As I write this it's August 21, 2009.. around 10pm on a Friday night. A Friday night in time. Muggy, hot.. tropical.

I hate it, but somehow I love it..

Before long, August turns to September and the warm vanishes.. October turns to winter and those summer dreams of inspiration and freedom are long gone..

I don't care much for late summer air.. Until I think of past late summers and the air they brought..

BRYAN SMOLOCK THE HORROR REPORT FRIDAY 10:15 PM 8/21/2009