Summer Musings

The Photodiarist

Summer is, by and far, my favorite season. Summer excites me, makes me tingle with anticipation. It fills me with endless possibility when I wake up every morning thinking about the extra daylight I now have at my fingertips. It bronzes my skin, lightens my hair, slyly coaxes me into painting my nails bright colors. It encourages me to stay outside longer, to embrace warmth as often as I can, to be surrounded by others equally buoyed by this inexplicable seasonally-attached happiness. It makes me so, so happy. So joyful, spritely. The child in me fiercely wants to grab a handful of Summer, and put it in a jar somewhere to be taken out again in the doldrums and snowy depths of Winter (obviously my least favorite season ever). I would put in it a fistful of grass, two scoops of ice cream, maybe a firefly (for special effects), some grains of sand, a loose tank top, my most frequently used pair of sunglasses, and the blueness in the sky. It would probably have to be a very large jar, actually. Or maybe even a room that I can visit over and over again.

Revolutionary

April Wheeler: "Tell me the truth, Frank, remember that? We used to live by it. And you know what's so good about the truth? Everyone knows what it is however long they've lived without it. No one forgets the truth, Frank, they just get better at lying."

I want to plug up the remaining cracks with my fingers and chalk the seams and joints of the sides and mash together the broken remnants and mold everything into the tightest little ball, re-modelling like the clay geniuses, globular and firm and visible all the way around, so that nothing new enters and everything old and dirty and abused has already left, a perfectly clean beginning but really not a beginning at all nor an end, nothingness (limbo?), a slice of understated and lesser-known freedom, held in perpetual motion, whirring quietly, bathed and cupped so tenderly, every little particle is loved, loveloveloved, everything so that I never have to feel like this again.

Yuck

Had a TERRIBLE run this morning. Fifteen minutes into it, right smack in the middle of the Brooklyn Bridge, I had the most uncontrollable urge to throw up. Cramps in my stomach, felt so sluggish. I'm wondering if it was due to the residual BBQ lingering my body, thanks to the Big Apple BBQ yesterday. At any rate, I had to turn back around and slowly limp home, stopping every few yards to double over in pain. Yuck. What a yucky way to start a week. Need to erase the memory of this immediately!

Cottage!

Cottage cheese with golden raisins, chopped walnuts, dried apricots and a drizzle of honey

The yummiest breakfast these days.
On another note, how is that mothers know everything?

Rainy Days

Things I Appreciate On Rainy Days

1) Steaming cups of Earl Grey tea with a spoonful of honey.

2) My warm down blanket that numerous trips to the laundromat have made big and indescribably fluffy.

3) Grey's Anatomy and its free accessibility online.

4) Leftover cheesecake from Eileen's that magically presented itself upon the opening of my fridge.

5) Short stories by a certain Junot Diaz.

6) The chance to steer clear of outdoor activities in favor of totally underrated indoor ones.

Ray

That lone, singular sigh at the beginning of this song. It makes me clutch my heart, every time.

AHH

1) I HATE BEING SICK. IT MAKES ME FEEL SO USELESS.

2) I MISS EVERYONE AND EVERYTHING.

I think a lot about life consists of throwing your weight into something, or even someone. Throwing all of your weight into that something, burrowing deep within it, investing your limited emotional resources, all of you. Sometimes really beautiful things can arise, whether on purpose or purely incidental, when that something and you just click and everything feels right and you feel so, so good as a result. And with time and repetition, sometimes hobbies eventually form. I say all this because I feel like I've been hobby-less for a while, and it's only just now beginning to dawn on me.

In truth, I've been burying myself in other activities that definitely don't fall in the aforementioned "hobby" category, namely drinking and smoking and all sorts of debauchery and merriment. It's been fun, and in a lot of strange ways, refreshing as well. Sometimes it's nice to just close your eyes and hide your face. Averting, avoiding. But at the end of the day, when I stumble into bed at night, I'm not fulfilled and I am far from satiated. I need more than this. I need to produce beauty, make something extraordinary and feel extra ordinary in the process. These days, I am nothing. I offer nothing to the world and the recognition of this fact is incredibly frustrating. Not to mention disappointing.

I'm trying to remember when I used to do things that I inherently enjoyed, that did my mind and body good, because nowadays both are becoming increasingly restless. My intellect is slowly atrophying and my physical self is just plain bored. I think I'm finally ready to explore new hobbies and maybe revisit some long standing old ones as well. The hardest step right now, though, is picking myself (all of the scattered pieces) up off the floor in order to do so.