Where are all the lightning bugs?

We are all too busy, giving ourselves up to a buzzy amount of activity that, upon analysis, turns out all too often to be fairly non-essential. The heat of August--the ripening of the summer season itself--burns that tendency out of the people around here. France and other Mediterranean countries shut down, giving themselves up to the elements, based on a collective ancient logic.

After the high water mark of Bastille Day (in this most parched of periods), everything and everyone tend to become rather worn down by the heat.

Yet herein lies the opportunity for renewal. It happens in the most incremental of ways, much like the turn of the worm in the earth or the roll of the owl's eye against its closed lid. In the deepest stillness of high summer everything that came before and is to come seems to fade. The focus is fixed in the now: the sheer cotton shift that clings to the humid back, the beaded sweat on the glass of iced green tea, the dog dreamy with prospect, his slightly wagging tail the only movement in the endless afternoon.

Come nightfall (what some call the winter of the tropics), we will begin looking for lightning bugs, glass jar in hand.