A Summer Diary (A Walk)

I have a habit of looking at the sun above my head. Every now and then I do that.

This way, seeing how high it is above the horizon, I can roughly estimate what time it is. Or how long it is before the sunset. If the sun is approaching the horizon I know, it's about seven or eight o'clock in the evening.

Also, it's some ritual, attaching me to the reality around. Maybe it's bad for my eyes. Sometimes I sneeze. I read it's a peculiar reaction of the human body to the sunlight getting directly in the eye.

I see the grass and low trees on my left side. Dust and smell of gasoline exhaust on the right, where the road is choked with cars, trying to move.

I see small, white and pink clover flowers among the grass.

The wind touches the tree leaves, making them shimmer like ripples on the water, casting multiple reflections of light.

When I reach the shadows of the park, I feel like the heat that envelopes me subsides. There are familiar things. Thick bushes of nettle, dilapidated stone stairs leading down to the small terraces filled with water, cooling in the shade of wide leaves of small trees surrounding the pools.

There are slopes and stairs leading gradually and irresistibly toward the river. At some point, it becomes visible as a multitude of bright sparkles, its ripples produce an infinite number of dazzling reflections of the sunlight in the water.

The river embankment is illuminated so brightly that it hurts to look at it. People, walking and riding along it, create a sensation of a never-ending festival. Sometimes because of that, it feels that the place itself is alive.

Tall trees are towering towards the sky with their tops invisible somewhere high above and their crowns creating a cool shadow below.

There is a small apple garden near the railroad. The futuristic constructions of subway station protrude in the middle of a tiny square with flower beds scattered around it and under the squat apple trees.

At the open space of the square summer heat is so intense that it feels like there is a glowing furnace somewhere close above the head. Every surface radiates heat.

Meanwhile, in the shades of the trees, it's fresh and chilly, and there is a sensation of a constant breeze.

Wildflowers populating the grasses gradually replace each other throughout the summer; vivid yellow dandelions reminiscent of the small suns give way to modest and pale clovers and chamomiles.

Clear blue sky with the strange and mysterious patterns of clouds in it. And the elusive darts of plane trails