this is it

You quit your seat in a darkened movie theater, walk past the empty lobby, out the double glass doors, and step like Orpheus into the street. And the cumulative force of the present you've forgotten sets you reeling, staggering, as if you've been struck broadside by a plank. It all floods back to you. Yes, you say, as if you'd been asleep a hundred years, this is it, this is the real weather, the lavender light fading, the full moisture in your lungs, the heat from the pavement on your lips and palms - not the dry orange dust from horses' hooves, the salt sea, the sour Coke - but this solid air, the blood pumping in your thighs again, your fingers alive. And on the way home you drive exhilarated, energized, under scented, silhouetted trees.

(from Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek)

I remember this really resonating with me the first time I read it, and it seems right to post it now. Not only because I'm lacking in posts lately but because it's summer - the time to spend a few hours holed away in a cold movie theater and then emerge to feel the real weather, and the excitement of reality. The best movies are the ones that draw you in so entirely that you forget about real life for a while, but when you re-emerge back into reality, you're energized to think about it in a new way.