It's the morning of July 17, and summer is here in all its glory. This has been a cool, low-humidity, gorgeous week, and today begins another glorious day. On mornings like this, I'm reminded of a passage from John Knowles' A Separate Peace:

One summer day after another broke with a cool effulgence . . . and there was a breath of widening life in the morning air, something hard to describe -- an oxygen intoxicant . . . some odor, some feeling so hopelessly promising that I would fall back in my bed on guard against it. . . . I wanted to break out crying from stabs of hopeless joy, or intolerable promise, or because those mornings were too full of beauty for me.

One of my favorite passages from John Knowles' A Separate Peace:

One summer day after another broke with a cool effulgence over us, and there was a breath of widening life in the morning air—something hard to describe—an oxygen intoxicant, a shining northern paganism, some odor, some feeling so hopelessly promising that I would fall back in my bed on guard against it. It was hard to remember in the heady and sensual clarity of these mornings; I forgot whom I hated and who hated me. I wanted to break out crying from stabs of hopeless joy, or intolerable promise, or because these mornings were too full of beauty for me, because I knew of too much hate to be contained in a world like this.