Fire Flowers (Hanabi)

Summer won't ever lose its nostalgic sheen for me. It's about extremes - sticky sweaty crowds, ice cream dripping down my fingers, hands and shirt, bright blue skies and unexpected thunderstorms. It's very sensual - all about ripe, overripe, juku juku, drums pounding, the murmuring crowds at the train station, the smell of subway and grease. Especially now, especially in Japan.

This summer is my last so it's saturated with bitter sweets: sentimentality and impending uncertainty about the future. I feel in between places and ages - desperately grasping at independence but stubbornly refusing to grow up.

I'm already poised to look back, armed with "Remember when's" and wistfulness. It's almost easier to fast forward through to September and freshly sharpened No. 2's because really experiencing now would mean acknowledging how little time is left.

I suppose that's what hedonism is about. No time but the present and all that.

So instead I opt for Martha's tidy world, tastefully sterilized. Void of memory, of muggy summer nights and getting lost on trains and hot concrete roads, for something easier to swallow: Pellegrino & a twist of lemon. A predictable, controllable, organized future.