Source: Nagasawu Rosetsu (1754-1779)
"I'm going to divide the summer up in two parts. First part of this tablet is titled: RITES AND CEREMONIES. The first time running barefoot in the grass of the year. First time almost drowning in the lake of the year. First watermelon. First mosquito. First harvest of dandelions. There are the things we do over and over and never think." ("Dandelion Wine" by Ray Bradbury)
RITUALS
(Creative Writing)
Ritual 1 by Mila Prol Rejo
"A trip to the village, our roots, to the past of my parents, to see our forgotten relatives. A trip to freedom, for us, children, a trip to remembrances".
Rituals and Ceremonies 2 by Cándido Pintos Andrés
"The beginning of the summer was more the end of the school year than the holidays, but, Saint John's night used to be the starting point with all the notebooks burning in the bonfire, while we planned how to spend the rest of the days that seemed never-ending from that perspective.
It was a time with a second home in the country to share with parents, grandparents or cousins, but for the unlucky ones, city dwellers, who longed for any acquaintance to stay with. My grandmother's village (Iria Flavia) became my Greentown.
Looking back, I wonder if all my old rituals could be repeated today by any of my sons, and, I realize that most of them would be illegal or at least inappropriate.
Chocolate cigarettes in a fully crowded and overloaded car on the way to the river, no seat belts and driven by my best friend’s elder brother, an amateur rally car driver and cognac lover. Afternoons were spent laying half naked on the river bank while the most daring ones peeped at the girls or threw them pebbles. When the sun went down, Fermin’s grocery store, our little Harrods where we could buy an ice lolly or a hand saw, was our meeting point. In the evening, around the house but, never inside it, we tried to build a cabin with the skyrocket sticks, every Sunday, after mass, its roof crumbled easily. No remembrances about having finished it ever."
Between Rituals and Revelations by Marcial Múñoz Sobrino
INA
"During the summer of 1982, Jupiter Jones seldom wore his tortoiseshell round glasses on the beach. Had he got rid of his NIVEA cap too, you’d have been allowed a glimpse of what was going on in his head. But, being the cap as stubborn as a limpet, you’d have to be familiar with the brain presumably inside to be aware of the deep impression Mr Finch 's biology class had left on Juppy (a familiarity, by the way, no longer admitted). Nevertheless, if familiar with that nut, you’d have had to first notice a name. Three-capital-lettered. Cursive, Times-New-Roman typed. 120-sized, that is, quite big for the size of that particular organ. In a nutshell, a girl’s name. Then, ears pricked up, you’d have listened for a background drone to find out Darwin, yes, fucking Charles Darwin, preaching on fucking natural selection, fucking evolution of species, fucking atrophy of nonfunctional organs and DNA and whatnot. “Don’t you see, you poor would-be man, what has become of, say, the appendix or the coccyx?”, the old fellow’s deep voice would echo in Jupiter’s otherwise empty, shortcircuited brain. And Ju-Jo (sorry, I mean Jupiter) wouldn’t but shudder at the mere thought of his most beloved members decaying. The summer of 1982 was as long as a long, long glaciation. Alien and useless, it ended up fading and dying out. Cupid’s arrows, weever’s stings, the cap of a little beach fakir, the tide washed away. Yet, against all odds, a beloved small-sized organ remained safe and sound. And deep inside it, where the hippocampus dwells, you could still find a capsule of time, the appendix of this story: a three-capital-lettered name."
Rituals by Marián Machado Panete
"We dreamt to be free, to be in the wild, to be mischievous, to deceive hierarchy and, in hindsight, surveillance on us was absolute. At those times, everybody was known and watched by every inhabitant of the parish.
That was, without knowing, our best alibi: “ o teu fillo, e o teu…” all the community was implicated some way or the other. Anyhow, we felt defiant, under the spell of the fire, and the over tolerance of summer. We set for our adventures at the sunset. First, we organized the different parties: those in charge of sneaking into the corn fields in search of the tenderest corn cobs, those digging out the potatoes from the soil in family orchards and those collecting the twigs to keep the fire going in the most secluded clearing glade. Later, under the hypnotizing attraction of the dancing flames, the cracklings and the spatting sparks, we roasted the loot, feeling over powerful. Time stopped for a blessing while."
Rituals by Servando Barreiro
Summer rituals: indulging in good weather outdoors with friends, travelling to small villages, at the weekend, where the brass band played with my father on the saxophone followed by a family lunch on the river bank with uncles and cousins. Waiting shift to shower on Saturday nights, local fiestas at the end of August, going to a neighbour’s swimming pool and picking fruit on the way.
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