Solstice Day: Shadows Long and Lean
Speaking With Manny, Weather, and Shadow Puppets
“A day, a livelong day, is not one thing but many … as a day changes so do its subjects, bugs and birds, cats, dogs, butterflies and people.”
—John Steinbeck
The day begins so evenly, so level. Already, a bright, ground-level sun has begun to cast my shadow in front of me. Today is the longest day of the year, and I’m on the flattest part of Illinois I could find. Prepared to witness my image elongated as far as I can see. I am amazed because the air is absolutely, positively, one hundred percent clear. No breeze, low humidity, and a temperature in the low 60s. An immaculate world paying respects to the first bar of sunshine. Time feels both still and moving.
“If you were walking, it would take a quarter hour to reach the end of me,” I say to a sudden stranger. He is an older man, plain and slow in pace; he halts between breaths. He tells me he has an irregular and slow, skipping heart. No bother, though; he’s probably gained a couple days of life, he figures, since his irregular beat gives his heart quick breaks every few minutes. He says he has to move cautiously, and what he sees anymore comes across as murky. He wobbles a little side to side, whether moving or standing. He seems hungry for sunlight; even stares directly into the sun while talking, licking his lips.
The conversation continues. I tell him I was born in Detroit, Michigan, and have since lived in Iowa, Idaho, Kansas, Oregon, and Wisconsin. I tell him there are some other places I might consider moving to, but not for a while yet. I consider speaking with him about the weather, but he beats me to it.
“Good day for sun,” he says, smudging the ground with one foot.
I say, “A great day for shadows, the best in fact.” Says his name is Manny Sanguillen.
“The baseball player,” I ask?
“Oh no, no, not me, I’m no ballplayer.” Manny saunters when he speaks, that is to say, he seems to be thinking about three or four things at once and only manages to get words out of his mouth by chance, sharing one of four stories he could be telling. Maybe this has to do with his irregular heart and murky vision. I wish I could listen to four stories going on at once. I have a strange feeling I could follow along; am tempted to request he tells me everything, but then think, what if he isn’t doing this at all and just goes slowly, hesitating.
All the while, the sun behind us approaches the ideal angle for the longest shadow of the year. I look out. At this moment, on June 21st, I am as long as the curve of the earth allows.
Manny sticks his hand in the air and makes a shadow bunny, it takes a few seconds for us to find his shadow, but then we see it cast on the ground. He tweaks the rabbit’s ears. We both chuckle. But the world turns, and before we know it, the sun has moved, shortened the shadows. I’m relieved, winter is on the way.
He explains he wasn’t expecting to see me standing here today. He says his farm, this incredibly flat spot where we are now, he named Echoes Farm. He explains the place has a soothing, repeating pattern if you give it a chance. He says all this twice and laughs lightly, “You get it? Echoes, echoes. Someday I’ll tell you about the worms, if we meet again.”1
I say I am writing for the Ice Cube Press in Iowa, and he says this sounds cold. I say, “It’s supposed to sound cool, but people tell me it’s not professional enough.” He scoffs at this and says, “Figures, people always have advice, not many do much of anything though.”
“Or have individuality,” I add.
He tells me how the worst thing he can think of becoming at this point in his life would be a statue. He is afraid of life, he admits. He never thought he would ever walk so slowly, rise so slow, breath so slow, feel so abstract and confused. He fears his arthritis is an accumulation of gravel and he is literally becoming a rock.
“How about becoming a memorial shadow?” I suggest, remembering what I was here for, but also thinking about his idea of not becoming a statue. I notice I am speaking slower, trying to keep my different lines of thought from coming out mixed. Manny notices this and says, “You see, it’s hard, isn’t it, this thinking and talking stuff. The mind moves quicker than the mouth, at least with me.” He says he likes my idea of a memorial shadow. Maybe his memorial shadow would inspire some penumbra & umbra chanting. We both pause and let the shadows probe and stretch—moving like elastic beams of darkness over the earth.
Manny remains quiet and looks pale. He has stopped breathing, then quickly he is back, and he asks me what I am writing about. I tell him I am studying the way weather works. I am putting together a book on wind and clouds, the mixing of the earthly elements. Am going to call the book Panning the World for Gold.
Manny halts, looks out in the distance, then back at me, directly in the eyes for the first time, and I notice he has black eyes. The walking stick he’s holding is made of yellow Osage Orange wood, the color of captured sunlight, and trembling in his grip. He tells me, living outside so much he’s fascinated with weather. In fact, the weather itself is a good book to read. “Make sure you mention this somewhere,” he tells me, “That weather is a good book.” I nod my head—ok.
“One more thing to put in. I have always wondered if the weather isn’t following a long loop. Any chance you might try and cover an idea like that? Every 2000 years a similar pattern starts and evolves all over again?”
I tell him I will put this in the book as well. Then I mention the reason I am here now is to watch the shadows and the sun, because they combine on the solstice differently than any other day of the year.
Manny stops breathing again. I wait, and then, he’s back and says, “That’s good. When I think of people writing books, I never imagine anyone actually going outside, looking around, and being alive.”
While he’s talking, the sun goes behind a lone cloud. A clump of white daring the sun on this longest day of the year. In the absence of full sunlight, I notice Manny is gone. Not just kind of, not just mentally, I mean, really gone. I can’t find him, and I am twinged with a combination of wonder, fear, and embarrassment. I am wondering whether he really existed. Surely, I am not speaking to myself. When the cloud has moved past the sun, and it gets bright again, and Manny is still nowhere to be seen, I look to see if he is casting a shadow somewhere, but nothing. I’m alone. Was he the tip of a shadow?
There is only one explanation, assuming I am not crazy. On the longest day of the year, on this flat portion of the earth, there is more to see than any other day. There is more illumination of the earth, albeit briefly, as the sun shines deeper—enlightenment in real time.
I say out loud, to the sky, to the air, to this level space of Illinois, “I’ll see you next year, Manny.”
And amazingly enough, I do.
To test my theory, I went back the next year, and Manny appeared again. Emerged more like. He was a shadow stepping out of itself.
So, I ask him what it’s like to live in the dark 364 days, 23 hours, and 52-1/2 minutes a year, and he says it’s not so bad, time flies, darkness is a life in and of itself. He asks me if what he told me about the weather last year made it in the book, and I say that, yes, it will be, but I waited a year to get back to this day because this is also going to be in the book. Manny nods, looks around a few seconds, and whispers, winking his left eye, “Not bad. That’s what a book is, an act of patience, right? Whether you’re writing, reading, or just living in the shadows.”
I wouldn’t say he twinkles away, but pretty soon Manny goes dim and disappears. I’ll probably keep coming back to see him every year.
What’s the writing advice this time? Richard Flanigan, from his Gould’s Book of Fish: “Could it be that when all backs are turned, when all faces are focused on the pokie monitors, there is no one left to witness the moment an old woman levitates…” Keep your eyes—wide, wider, widened, and widest—open for possibilities.
Somewhere along the line, I became a member of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative. I am a ghost in their machine. They all write with vim. I write with vigor.
coming soon to Substack.
A wonderful read that will keep me looking around and thinking for quite a while.
That's a stunning shade of magic.