The light changes again.

Summer Solstice seems medieval and silly now right, all about pagans and bonfires and weird European gods. But it's important. It is an event of the whole planet. The earth is tilting farthest to the sun. We are as close to the sun as we get. The entire Northern Hemisphere is recognizing the longest day of the year.

It's a halfway point in our year. Sensing the end of the seasons, remembering winters that are coming. It inflicts a sense of urgency in our summer, even though summer is just beginning. Solstice reminds us that we are at our peak, and things will need to be harvested and completed, just like winter solstice tells us the darkness will be lifting. So hurry the fuck up and start that yard project. You want to go to Canada, now's the time. You want to learn how to ride your bike in busy traffic, or go to that old fort by Toledo, or have that backyard party? Do it now.

And why did our ancestors celebrate this, not knowing what it actually meant in numbers? They would have had even more urgency, since winter was a time of death and starvation and illness. They would have prayed to their gods to make everything grow, and for babies before it got cold. To extend the light as long as possible so they didn't have to huddle in the cold and be wet all the time . A futile gesture, but an important discipline, for those who wanted to survive. Modern Day us seems to have forgotten the more literal lesson.

I'm okay with that. Maybe we don't need to know it. Its not like everything medieval is really awesome. It's good to forget fear and just relax in the light, and appreciate it's glare. Get some sun on our pasty forearms and cover up our scars with freckles.

So it should now just be a day of appreciation that it's not gloomy all the time, or rainy, or dark. Thank your gods that it's not shit weather all the time. You get to wear sleeveless things, and feels breezes on your arms. You get to forget the harshness of jeans for a while. You can walk casually, instead of blindly bustle to your car. You don't have to worry about getting into accidents all the time while driving.

And don't spend your time inside working all the time, cause you only have so many summers left. We are eventually going to tilt too far and fall in the sun. No, I have no idea if that's true. It's probably not. But I could have left it, and in the back of your head you would have believed it, which is the other important thing to remember today.

Westinghouse: They used to make lamps? Or chairs. Whatever.

When you start to actively search daily for places to trespass, it becomes clear pretty quickly that there are certain places everyone has gone to. These are like the novice levels, the wading pools of decaying civic gawkery. Westinghouse, for instance, will come up on everyone's Flickr page. It's like, the easiest place in the world to get into to. There's like, big open loading docks and no doors.

What the hell, I'm a novice. J. and I were going to try to get into this recently boarded up middle school first, but the only entrance was between some bars, walking a narrow ledge, then down a scary looking ladder, between some broken glass, into the pitch black basement. That would be what I would call intermediate level. I might have made the leap if I was wearing long sleeves and boots. But for now, maybe next time. For now I'll stick to the obviously open.

I love walking in these places. I feel like, with all this other stupid horrible crap going on in the outside world, nothing is going to touch me here. Except maybe a hobo. And I'll shank them if they try. It's so quiet and still. I mean, they are ruins. People go visit ruins all over the world. People pay lots of money to stare at buildings left behind. That particular sense of history you get from being in and around disuse and abandon, it's better than valium. I calm down instantly, but my heart also starts to race. J. called it "afterglow".




Architecture is marvelous to me, all exoskeleton and steel. The bones of the structure that poke out as the soft stone starts to peel away. And rust. Rust is amazing. I feel like if I get it on my body, it will eat me away too. It's looking to kill me with every step I make, I'm being hunted, I have to be careful. The rust is all around, a predatory fungus, winning. I'm the stupid bumbling thing in its lair.


And its great to run across good graffiti. Funny graffiti. It's a flag in the alien landscape. It reminds you to be braver. It's an important reminder to get every once in a while.


More photos can be found here.