Solstice Day

Druids, hippies, revelers and curious spectators gather at Stonehenge, the neolithic arrangement of sun-beveling tablet stones and window-wide steps, shallow dips carved into the Beacon Hill of Cambridge. The spread of respite is a sight so rare it might as well be the city's grass farm, the emerald island farm supporting bodies in the supine position, several dozen Welwichia in the Sahara desert, thick brown tendrils the curly-nailed world record holder for longest nails, a foriegn biological taking hostage on the sands of the uninhabited reaches of the continent. The plant was only recently discovered due to its rarity and affintiy for vast, isolated parchment. On a hill across the pond, Celtic ancestors still invest mythology and spiritual meaning into the precariously placed megaliths, festivities in blue woad paint, pasted hunks of braids circling the head in evocative frenzy, the weighted acceleration an inverse relationship with the length of day. The charcoal woodberry-whetted backdrop of carnal vestments and vocalizations is a profession of European association with tribal origins, long attempts to snuff out histories of impecable Edwardian manners and the suffocating collars of Victorian prudence.

Dash surreptitiously into the late evening sunlight and the day presents itself as almost too early for a mead hall visit. Gaze through moist, syrupy air in search of a bean shaped automobile, and look upon a particular Welwichia that waves. "It's the longest day of the year," prompting excitment and the ensuing midnight dip into the nearest inky body of water, a glass of beer at the Politik Republican and a collection of beach rocks of Lost coast flowers. The solstice carnage culminates in the serendipitous hypocracy of lake-effect lunar mapping, the enjoyably unexpected passenger of a hurt bicycle, and the unwilling irony of sweet pickle turkey sandwiches in early morning.