what sunshine does to a pale seattle-ite

Lately, whenever I talk to a person, and you know, you get to the obvious question, "So, what have you been up to?"--I find I have little to say. This is a summer of quiet. Do you really want to know what I've been up to? Walking. Reading obscure books very slowly, all freakin' day long. Sitting on my balcony under the trees and trying to empty my mind. I'm to the point where I can't even stand having the radio on in my car, unless I happen upon some really good jazz. If it's only decently good, it gets turned off. I'm obsessed with silence.
I think it's the summer that does it to me, along with a sudden aversion to makeup and a smirking refusal to shave my legs. I'm morphing into a contemplative. The next stage, in progress right now, is to start reading books about ecology and the state of the world and start dreaming about joining a semi-religious commune such as the Farm. But of course, what I really want is the 1975 version of the Farm, sleeping in a tent and picking vegetables by hand and living on apple butter and marijuana. Sigh. My boss last summer told me that if I had been born in a different era, I would have been dancing at Woodstock with daisies in my hair. Maybe. But only in the summer.