Each season brings a different hue to romance, though none suggests ‘touch me’ in the same hot way as the next few months. Some of my fondest make out memories involve sand in unmentionable places and late nights spent swaying to the sound of ocean waves. Who cares what your hair looks like when the evening wind is your stylist and the heat of the day mingles with the scent of your lover’s body.

Summer has sensuality in its sights. It is also an invitation to slow down. If there’s
one thing I could manifest as days lengthen and nights heat up, it is that we lean into the deeper experience of what it means to let go of being busy. Our culture is especially prone to the angst of doing at the expense of being. Summer reminds us to re-invent nothing to do. We having everything ‘to be’ to gain. Let this be the season for quieting the mental static, relinquishing what it is that we have to do, and allowing in the restorative power of pleasure and love. Intimacy flourishes with this intention.

I just recently heard someone talk about Deep Time. Without knowing much, the idea resonated with me. Something in my toes, in my soul, in my wants and wishes responded to those two words at an intuitive level. My lungs want to fill up with air at the pace of Deep Time; my heart wants to race towards my beloved in that slow motion; my mind wants respite from to do lists and laundry piles, because those summer breezes are sweeter than the modern substitute called a dryer.

Deep Time is an ecological concept. Earth has a history that far pre-dates ours. We see her story in the layers of sediment, her mountainous curves and wild crevices. I want Deep Time to be the way we know love. How we make it with one another – languid and lazy. How we nurture the newly minted summer crush and the winters of pair bonding – breathing, raging and raw, infusing this crazy process called falling in love, of which we know so little and too much.

Lazy lovemaking is also the language of vaginas. Well, at least the one that I know and the ones Eve Ensler asked in the Vagina Monologues. “If your vagina could speak, what would it say?” The answer was, “Slow down.” Linger a bit, why don’t you. Turn me on, let me simmer, let us summertime this moment together.

Deep Time viewed this way has the ability to soothe the proverbial frustration of vulvas and the women to which they belong. The female fun button (oh, but she keeps surprising us, the magical gem called a clitoris, only now revealing her secrets, her structures) does not mean it should be treated like a Fisher-Price toy. The gentle art of clitoral persuasion can’t be rushed.

Deep Time is a quiet conduit to our deeper spaces and inner landscapes. It whispers: Take time to touch and feel the touch of your beloved. Take time to enjoy the sensations of love and the journey of arousal. Relax and stretch your sun kissed limbs. Check expectations at the door. What perfect weather for stealing hammock naps and moonlit caresses, and when those heat things up, making love like you are going to get an encore invitation, a standing ovation worthy of June’s boast.

And the scents of summer! One of the hottest things we can do with each other – breathing slow and sexy, close and warm, wrapped up in each other’s personal space – doesn’t even involve the genitals. Though we may forget it in the hustle of ordinary living, it’s our nature to float gently in the pleasure of each caress, each nibble, each olfactory sensation. We are born naked and aware of this. Our noses are primed for sniffing night blooming jasmine, pheromones, and our lover’s breath. Summer winds, with their affection for bare skin invites us back to that original enchantment.

If a June night could murmur, it would do so with a smile. It’s been here many times before with the same sweet message of summer love, happened so slowly.