Beach love

Dear Dilettante Squid:

The current question of why summer is often, or at least used to be, the setting for that phenomenon we've come to call summer love is very interesting. In fact, numerous scholars are addressing the question of whether we might not be witnessing the end of this popular myth. And as with almost all the main walls of our private and social lives that have become liquid walls, technology has a lot to do with it. But as Jack the Ripper said, let's take it step by step.

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Why summer? Because we have vacations, leisure time, time for ourselves that we exchange for enjoyment. Weeks, months where we seek to do or have things happen to us that we don't usually do or happen to us the rest of the year. We're also likely to swap our domestic and urban surroundings for exotic or wild settings suited to the season and our budget (sea, mountains, camping, trails, hiking...). We put on Bermuda shorts and flip-flops, go to bed late, sleep lulled to sleep by the snoring of the owner of the plot next door, get lost in a Cantabrian gorge until we reach the forest rescue, and, most importantly, we're prepared to destroy our lives up to that point: fall in love, hook up, cheat, hurt each other, go completely crazy with, until now, strangers, sisters-in-law, and our best friends' boyfriends. It doesn't matter. It's summer. We are an erotic and amorous volcano. Adventure of a lifetime, we're coming for you.

Summer love was a triple somersault, yes, but with a net. The net was called August 31st. Never have we cried more than in the last days of August, nor have we made more promises than, like in documentaries about baby turtles, few reach the sea from October to Christmas. We were all for summer love... because we knew it was ending, and forever (she lives in Bath and you, in Manresa). The imminence of Thanatos exacerbated Eros. A summer love condenses all the stages of a romantic relationship at extreme speed because it has a death date. Love ends up dying in all its splendor, barely when it has been born. During the year we can fall in love forever or for a while, but we rarely fall in love knowing that eternal love will last until the end of the month.

It condenses all the stages of a relationship at extreme speed because it has a death date.

Some lines found in Kafka's Adolescent Diary (Edhasa Publishing House, edited by Daniel Fernández) allow us to illustrate the journey of this type of love:

August 1: I hate my parents.

August 2 and 3: I hate my parents and this shitty town they've forced me to where I don't know anyone.

August 6: I want to die. All the mosquitoes bite me.

August 8: Germany declared war on Russia. In the afternoon, I went swimming.

August 9: I met some guys. They organized a soccer game.

August 13: I scored a Pavel Nedved-style goal. I love my parents.

August 15: One of the boys' sisters seems nice. Her name is Felice. I think she's Max Brod's girlfriend.

August 18: Town festival. Felice wasn't Max Brod's girlfriend. I wish we'd move to this town.

August 20: I kissed Felice. I'm in love. I know it'll be forever. It's not like the other times. I know it.

August 21-28: We're happy. Alcohol, friends, cigarettes, bicycles, walks through the cemetery, disgusting sex on the beach...

August 29: I pretend to be a cockroach and Felice bursts out laughing. I love her.

August 30: Tomorrow we're going home. Felice and I have sworn to write to each other, to call each other, next year here again, maybe at Christmas. My heart is broken. I'm dying.

August 31: I hate my parents. Especially my father: I think I'll write him a letter.

The young Kafka perfectly exemplifies the timing of summer love. But today? Who can say it's a separation forever? Who can stop seeing each other? The only thing that can save summer love is the practice of ghosting, which is abruptly ending a relationship or communication with someone without giving any further signs of life: you don't send or answer messages, you don't answer emails or calls. To move on. It's perverting the tragic spirit of summer love, with two lovers in love and fate crushing them, because the one who practices ghosting is a con artist, but perhaps summer love needs a mutation or to leave cell phones out from the start.