summer "plans"

Down the street there’s a café with a pretty window. It’s right behind the counter, and in May, the only thing you can see through the brick square is green. Leaves shimmying in a school’s-out motion. While having paninis and coffees with friends, I soak in every word before our summer scattering, but the leaves through the window tease me, making it hard to focus. Later at dinner, I tell another friend, my oldest friend (in years spent knowing one another, not in age) about the window, how it looks just like one from our hometown but I can’t quite place which one. Do you ever wonder where it’s leading you? she asks me. Where the hell does that window go?!

I’ve been thinking about her questions for days. It’s all I think about really, how some people leave home without looking back. I always look back. Green never lets me off the hook. Most people wait all year for heat. I wait for the rain to come interrupt it. Most people are happiest in summer, meanwhile I’m filled with a degree of longing so substantial I want to break. Something in myself? Something outside? Something else?

Maybe that’s what the window fixation’s all about. I haven’t been brave enough to throw rocks. I’m still figuring out when to slide open and when to shatter certain panes of glass. I’m talking about the past. Summer has propulsion, progress. But underneath all that green? There’s a sepia tone.

Maybe it’s not really a matter of identifying a specific window from a previous summer but rather the color of the lake right before it rains, the color gradient trees transcend between August and June. How once a body stills, it’s left with melancholy. I’ve been wondering what it is that drives us into novelty and then what it is that allows us to stay somewhere, or even more miraculously, to return. What do you think? I’m beginning to believe departures and arrivals come from the same freshwater spring.

If you ask my sister about all this summer longing business, she’ll say it’s probably because I have the opposite version of seasonal affective disorder, the lesser known kind that people don’t complain about as much in public. Basically, what you’re telling me is I have the unfashionable kind of SAD?! Got it. Thanks. It makes sense though, I was born in January. Alien of the zodiac.

I don’t think the weather and daylight impacting us is solely a clinical, diagnosable condition though. I think how we experience these shifts in the calendar is also related to the some of the reasons people write: overwhelming sensations of panic and nostalgia. Sure, Vitamin D and the color green impact us. So do memories. And falling in love. Escapes to other time zones and decades’ old regret. Smooth and bumpy landings.

There are windows we catch glimpses of out in the world that we can’t look away from, and we’re not always sure why. Then there’s what’s on the other side of the window. Perhaps this is where poetry comes from? I still haven’t figured out where the café window leads or what it’s trying to tell me but I think it’s something like: Summer will always be a peak-and-valley home. Highest highs, lowest lows. It’s the reason why, come June, I’ll be heading back to source for awhile. The forested core of nostalgia (and if I’m being honest, panic too). Home home. The original time zone.

People have been asking me what my summer goals and plans are, and the only thing that comes out of my mouth in response is Honestly? Exist? Look at some clouds. Maybe make a dinner that takes a little time to pull off. I’ve been lousy at cooking in New York. I’ve become more of an assembler, lots of rice bowls (if you know, you know). And while I don’t spend the time I once did in the kitchen, I have still been loyal to the Saturday market in our neighborhood for flowers, herbs, greens. Countertop and bowl decor if you will.

This past weekend, I was pretty late on getting to the market. The woman at the produce stand let me know. You missed the strawberries! But still lots of herbs for you. People don’t know what to do with lemon balm! Sometimes, my friends, late birds get the best smelling herb. My favorite weekend ritual has become walking home with my freshly grown loot, peony and tulip petals still tucked into their stems. I stick the lemon balm into a glass kettle and watch the hot water serpentine itself chartreuse. And for the rest of the weekend, enjoy a 250 square foot performance of flowers as they unfold.

So, I think this summer I’ll grow some plants. Lemon balm for sure, along with basil and mint. I also have big plans to turn myself into a sort of plant and stand outside while it rains. I want to bathe in rain. I’ll most likely listen to this album right before, during, and after it storms.

(I recently met Lana at a picnic on a 90 degree day in Central Park. I listened to her album on the train home afterwards and decided immediately I couldn’t wait to listen to it again this summer while driving through the fields surrounding my hometown.)

Another summer fantasy I have is inspired by a recent essay/rant from Amie McNee. Are you ready for it? I’d like to install a landline. If my sister calls, I’ll answer. Everyone else, I’ll let it ring. How many people do you think will leave voicemails? How many people do you think we’d all be able to manage being in contact with if we had to call each other, then leave and listen to voicemails?! I’m actually dying to know. It could be a fun summer experiment if nothing else.

If I don’t figure out the landline logistics I’ll resort to the next best thing: floating in the middle of the lake on Sundays and staring at the same sky I did when I was a kid. In the words of Alex Dimitrov:

(I think about this line Every. Single. Day. It’s from the poem “Love”, from the book Love and Other Poems. I recommend getting a copy and reading it this summer because there’s a poem for every month of the year. “August” is up there for me. I read it every year on August 1.)

It will only be a few months away, but I’ll miss this wild city and her daily crash of cymbal, everything it gives and asks of a person. Honestly, I’m going to miss the couple block radius of our apartment most. The man with pitch white hair walking his corgi. The rusted vintage truck that appears to be growing sod (?) in the back. The comedy and jazz clubs that fill every night regardless if I’m awake to hear them. The post office. (Not all post offices are the same. I love the one on our street.) Walking across town to the prettiest studio devoted to helping New Yorkers breathe. Our vet! (He’s a dear, and has the same last name as my uncle, who was also my childhood dentist. He has a journal with 20 years worth of stories about all the characters who’ve brought their pets to him. He wants me to ghostwrite his book for him. Should I?!)

It’s been raining in the city since Friday. I’m sure people and businesses are bummed. I’m the opposite of bummed. Nearly everyone I know is out of town and it feels strangely sweet to be untethered for a moment. (It feels so good to write that out loud.) I’ve re-entered a forgotten depth of sleep. And watched 10 Things I Hate About You and Notting Hill and drifted off to Little Women on audio. I’ve been reminded of the currency that comes when changing the water in my own vase.

I consider myself a pretty solid leaper, to have an impressive appetite and capacity for change. The thing about leapers (the variety of leaper I am at least) that no one tells you about, the less romanticized part, are the seasons between leaps. The need to metabolize. Sometimes that means taking my body back to the place where every word I write seems to still come from. Back to the start. I need to crawl through that tantalizing childhood summer window. I’ll return in autumn baptized in lake, and maybe even a bit rested. First and foremost, green.