Solstice2008 1.0

The Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year, which normally falls somewhere on the 21st of June, this time falls on my most celebrated day - today. Awed by the great power of the sun, civilizations in the northern areas have for centuries celebrated the Summer Solstice, otherwise known as Midsummer (see Shakespeare), the Christian St. John's Day, or the Wiccan Litha. Pagans called the Midsummer moon the "Honey Moon" for the mead made from fermented honey that was part of wedding ceremonies performed at the Summer Solstice. At the time the sun passes the equator this year, I plan to be crossing the Manhattan bridge on my bike - for the first time ever - onto the island I now call home. The bike has been sitting in the basement at my office in Brooklyn (the borough in which I lived for three years before last November) just waiting for me to take on that bridge. I've been stalling, winter was the excuse for awhile, but today is the day.

Every year on this date, mostly on paper since before the advent of personal computers, I have reflected on my own through a series of written journals, all of which I still have.

When I was 14, I started to diligently work on two journals: one of personal thoughts which dealt with all of my hopes, issues and expectations from adolescence through adulthood (the written word of my life's passings and goings, which comprised of 9 books over the years, turned digital in 2002 and is now simply in the form of this blog); the other of a series of fictional stories - some based on real people in my life - separated into weekly chapters and ideas that were combined to create a fictional season (which led to four fully-coordinated fictional seasons as high school progressed) of an imaginary television station in my mind: WNET Channel 4. I can now see that this is where my screenwriting style of storytelling came to be (that and from the one television in the household that lived in my bedroom, which mom and I sat in front of throughout said childhood).

I'm an only child, raised by a single mother who worked hard to secure her own American dream after emigrating from Mexico for an education and a better life in Chicago. I lived a very sheltered inner-city life as a youngster, commuting every day to the Chicago suburbs for school. When High School came around, mom had her job transfer us to Cleveland (a city where she had been seeing someone during her years of work travel and had gotten to know well). My eighth grade graduating class in Desplaines, IL had 16 kids in it. Freshman year at LHS put me amongst 650 other kids, all of which came from 3 separate middle schools in the area. Everyone had a friend (or 10) in every class. I took to writing.

The first week of freshman year, as I was purchasing supplies for the semester, I made one of the most significant purchases of my life. It was a grey spiral-bound notebook that was divided into squares to be used as a class planner. Each set of open pages contained six boxes across and five boxes down, 30 boxes total per week, and enough pages for 30 weeks. Across the top was a section for class names, along the left side was a section for the days of the week. A brilliant possibility came over me, as I tried to focus tons of ideas that were swirling in my head as the new, lonely kid on the block. I bought an extra planner and changed its purpose. Across the top, I placed times (8:00pm, 8:30pm, 9:00pm... through 10:30pm) and down the side were the days (Monday-Friday). I started every September, a ritual I adored, by deciding what the stories (series) of the year would be. Some were 30 minute sketch comedies, formulas I adapted from shows I was familiar with on television at the time. Other "serials" were laid out for one-hour blocks, which meant I was given two blocks to summarize the details of the drama. Each serial had major and minor characters, each character had their own backstory and each relationship was either volatile or necessary in the continued continuity which became the arc of the story. In the notebook, every scene was described in short, separated by dark lines which were meant to be station breaks.

As the "seasons" progressed, I formulated the serials to grow and build, storylines would form in my head and I would enjoy the magic of having complete control of my characters and how (or if) they progressed through the year. I spent most of my time in my mind, making sure the summaries could actually fit in the time alloted. Every December and every May brought on heavy cliffhangers. I'd take the summers off and then continue where I left off, dropping some comedies along the way and creating new ones to take their place, and always keeping track of where the plot lines of the serials were headed. By Junior year, I began to focus on the end game, the finales which had to come. I knew i was in over my head with some of the stories, but they had to have conclusions and I wanted them to be perfect.

Junior year in Lakewood was also the year of Physics, not one of my best subjects but certainly one of my most memorable experiences. The teacher, Mark Wisniewski (Mr. W), had two crazy quirks about him: he had a Christmas tree farm in Pennsylvania which he cared for and loved to talk about, and he had a fascination with the changing of the seasons. Every September 21, December 20 and March 21 he would bring grape juice and cookies into his classes and give his speech on the sun before we all raised our cups and toasted that sun to welcome in a new season. If the official change of season happened to fall at the time of your class (which it did for us one season that year), we were granted sandwiches and a full on party for the entire period. It was a ritual I would never forget. At the end of the year, his last bit of advise to us was to remember to raise our glasses on June 20 or 21 (depending on when the summer solstice fell). That was advise I would also never forget, being as June 20 also happened to be the annual celebration of my birth.

Mr. W was an amazing teacher. He was quirky but sensible, silly but honest, playful beyond belief but with a determination and expectation for hard work. He taught me to believe in myself. I showed him my "television schedule" that spring, I remember it was about 4 weeks out from "Finale Week". He told me two things: don't get too carried away for nothing, and don't ever stop writing.

This year's summer solstice happens on June 20, 2008 at 7:59 PM EDT. I'll have a juice bottle with me as I begin the trek across the Manhattan bridge this evening and will raise it to Mr. W and the many worlds I built in those planners so many years ago. Then, I plan to go home, open them up and spend the weekend formulating several "reunion specials". I left two blank pages in the "last season"'s booklet for that very purpose. 15 years later, the time may finally have arrived.