This weekend in Boston was hot, hot like the summers before the pandemic, when everyone I knew was younger, so our energy was exhaustingly sharp, like an elbow to the ribs. I always felt surrounded in a crowd, embedded in everyone’s scents and hair and skin. Everything had a smell.
When we first heard the advisory calls to stay inside, something youthful in us went away, and only two years later did it begin its return: manic, repressed — I was then twenty-seven in body but my brain was two years younger — slightly stunted, by the heat that permeated my apartment most of the year of 2020. The summer of the pandemic was a breezy one. Everyone was drinking on the dried-out lawn overlooking the Charles, the patio tables makeshifted onto the streets were spare, we drank negronis while petting indoor cats on friends’ porches, and we always washed our hands. I rode my bike, only once, wearing a face mask made from swimwear material. The smell of hot, wet breath stuck onto it.
I haven’t smelled the dogwoods until today, when this heat, dystopianly surrounding, reminded me of the heat back in 2019, before the breeze slowed us all down. The days felt longer then, I can still picture the blue color of the slow-changing sky as I sat on a bench on a tree riddled avenue, with children playing behind me. All I did that night was look at the lengthening of my shadow on the sidewalk and feel my pants stick, my feet blister against the shoes I bought instead of buying dinner. At the fountain downtown, sitting looking at myself against the water, the sculpt of my jaw and hands, my reflection mimicking whatever despair I felt, now this exercise feels comical in its vanity. At the reflection pool outside the Christian Science Church, sitting with a man triple the size of me, following the blues of his eyes against the yellow of the streetlights, going on and off as pairs of lovers walked by us. This night consumed me for a year, and then one day left me, without so much as a hearty wave or tantrum, and I carried on in a different summer heat. The next year was waterfalls in a green New Hampshire, sucking down oysters by the ocean, camping in the White Mountains. I escaped most of the summer in the city, the heat subsided.
Yesterday was the first day in a long time I spent alone, so I savored it. I woke up early and watched shit on my computer, I ate breakfast and finished my book, I wrote, did pilates, took a long shower. I drew a Black-eyed Susan from memory. In the afternoon, on my walk I smelled the dogwoods, their familiarity reminded me of 2022, my first summer back after leaving the city during winter’s end. I had come back, to cat-sit for months in various strangers’ homes, where I fussed and fretted about like I used to at parks, on benches, at the edges of religious centers. My sphere of existence felt smaller, so my body shrank with it. I read books on porches, and I made my coffee. Stepping out yesterday reminded me of this period, and now, I am aware that my time in this part of my life, the summers built on escaping, is slowly ending. My feet and mind know these streets, so there is no need to sequester any thought inside me. I have become free from whatever possessed me to run, so again my living shrinks small enough to be only my own.
The dogwoods will rot come September. The hazy air of the summer dusk will dissipate. And my running will end, the answer to my abject questioning — what next? — will be an easier route to land on. When the dogwoods bloom again, I’ll walk within them hand in hand with what is worth having.
I once again find myself at the end of another month, confused as to how it went by so fast! Thank you, like always for reading June’s piece. I feel a little stifled in my writing but it feels good to release it.
This month I finished Didion & Babitz (Babitz & Didion? It was fine) and The Awakening by Kate Chopin (that was so good!!!) it’s good to know having a nervous breakdown during the summer is a quintessential girlhood experience. I’ve been listening to The Oracle Sisters newest album, Divinations which is the perfect album to do everything from grocery shopping to walking around a cemetery (I do both a lot). My favorite songs off of it are Moon on the Water, Riverside, and Marseille. A and I are still playing Steely Dan on repeat cause it’s officially a Steely Dan summer.
Another good read this month was In Bed by Joan Didion. It’s a master class in good writing.
I’ve also been into blueberries, only wearing my crocs, and finally being able to dunk in the cold New England ocean —
til the next, with love,
Gabo