Welcome to the Northeast, where a stretch of upper-90-degree days can suddenly turn to rainy mush in the mid-70’s and no one knows how to dress or act or behave anymore. Add in an unhealthy dash of Mercury in retrograde motion and you have the making of a minefield of moods just waiting to be set off by the slightest foraging mouse. Mice be forewarned.
Most people peg me as a Lucy, a few wiser folks see me as Snoopy, but I’m probably closer to Woodstock. I mean, the thing wears feathers. Hello. This is a kindred spirit.
American patriotism has been killed by the MAGA movement, and it’s quite the shame. The less said about that, the better – so on with this weekly blog recap – the very first one of July in a very golden summer…
What a wildly hot stretch of weather we’ve had this week, and despite my reputation for complaint, I haven’t made any because it’s summer and time to embrace it all. (When you have a pool and AC, you don’t really have a right to complain anyway.) It’s felt good, the way early summer always does when the sun deigns to shine. Some summers don’t grant us that, so when it’s here I show appreciation. Even at the tail end of the day, the heat has persisted, sometimes actually increasing into the night. Such strange turns have resulted in momentous storms popping up out of nowhere, landing a nightly deluge upon a grateful garden, and keeping all but the most dramatic of plants from wilting (looking at you, hellacious hydrangeas).
People can wilt in such heat too, physically and emotionally, and when summer turns like a knife it doesn’t care how it cuts – and sometimes cuts made without care are the most dangerous of all. At the end of a day, when the sun goes down but the temperatures refuse to follow, there is still no relief to be found in the air. Only beneath the water can you plumb the depths to locate a spot of coolness, and even then you can’t stay there for long.
Why do people – usually the worst people – decide to try to fix all their work issues on Friday at 3 PM and expect everyone else to solve such self-induced dilemmas before 4 PM?
As can be seen, and correctly surmised from my upper-body attire, my affection lies more with London, England these days than Washington, DC. (Relax – it’s only because I hate fascism and dictators and rapists – and all those who enable such monsters to flourish.)
Reflected off the pool, the light of the day is blue, especially when shaded by a cherry tree in full summer leaf. In the high heat of the afternoon, where we’ve been maxing out in the mid-90’s, the end of my work day is marked by a plunge into the pool, but it’s so there is only momentary reprieve to be found. The moment you surface, the hot air is back in your lungs, choking you from the inside out. One can’t stay safely underwater for that long; the brain and the body require more oxygen than the coolness would provide. I’m not about to trade this inferno in early for the one I may be destined for later on.
It’s not a particularly favorite state of mind, as wildly familiar as it sometimes seems.
A melancholy summer seems a bit of an oxymoron, an unfair alignment with an emotion that seems the antithesis of what should be the sunny happy season. My infuriating pathology is such that it goes against the happy grain when sunny days are expected. I’m as much a dark cloud as a hoot and a half – it’s generally a pesky problem for all who try so hard to love me.
In the high heat of summer, after a night rain, the day begins in hazy focus or lack there-of. The eye moves in on water and light, while the grass rises to shake it off, slowly bending upward and letting any remaining raindrops fall into the ground. Summer awakens and rights the day.
I like the silence of early summer mornings when the birds aren’t even singing and the cicadas haven’t started their incessant moan. The pool is still, the air doesn’t move, and even the fountain grass that moves in the most slight of breezes stands frozen as if in sculpture. It puts me in mind of a favorite poem by Pablo Neruda, which features a favorite word.
As all things are filled with my soul you emerge from the things, filled with my soul. You are like my soul, a butterfly of dream, and you are like the word Melancholy.
I like for you to be still, and you seem far away. It sounds as though you were lamenting, a butterfly cooing like a dove. And you hear me from far away, and my voice does not reach you: Let me come to be still in your silence.
And let me talk to you with your silence that is bright as a lamp, simple as a ring. You are like the night, with its stillness and constellations. Your silence is that of a star, as remote and candid.
I like for you to be still: it is as though you were absent, distant and full of sorrow as though you had died. One word then, one smile is enough. And I am happy, happy that it’s not true.
Today it signifies my current state of mind, which I caught to put in check just in the nick of time.
An explanation of that sentence then, awkward and stilted and inelegant – all the things I try not to be: my mind was already racing toward fall, planning and plotting out a fall theme for this website, figuring out the fall wardrobe, and breaking in a special pair of fall boots. Summer is but a few days old, and I was already working on fall – and that was simply madness.
As I said, I caught it just in time to realize how stupid I was being to jump ahead and lose the present moment of the sunny season, especially this week when summer turns to high. And so I put the fall on rightful pause, and indulged in the pool and the garden and the summer at hand. Bringing myself back to the present moment and taking myself out of the phone and out of the future felt like a remarkable relief.
Way back in the 1980’s, when I was but a wee lad, I don’t recall the crop top craze for guys, but I was so young that fashion hadn’t yet crossed my brainwaves. I’m told, and grainy photos will attest, that men did indeed enjoy their crop top moment – and I wish I had done so when it was easier to maintain a svelte figure than it is at my current age. Regardless, some decent lighting and trick angles, along with sucking in the gut at precisely the right moment manage to convince the world that things are all still somewhat presentable for the masses.
This post kicks off our July, in which this wayward country celebrates its 250th anniversary – such a shame we have such a moron sitting in and defiling the Presidency. The patriotic posts you’re about to see are all tongue-in-cheek, as I can’t genuinely celebrate what we’ve become right now, and America has always been about keeping the right to criticize. At least, it was.
There’s a Fourth of July post coming up here, if I choose to post those jockstrap pics – it’s so hard to decide what best personifies the USA right now, but if it’s not a jockstrap I’m hard-pressed to find something more fitting. Come on back to see that show if I’m brave enough to do it (and I’m always brave enough to do it).
My social media engagements these days are usually far less than most people I know, coming at the three times in a day when something new is posted on my website. Those are regularly scheduled and happen without much thought or input, so it looks like I’m more regularly engaged that I actually am. That’s because I learned long ago how far removed from reality social media too often is. Even Madonna seems to have come around when it comes to something like Instagram, where she previously spilled (overspilled?) every aspect of her life.
I still sometimes get sucked into the vortex of reels upon reels, and all the recommended videos are of course those that they intrigued your interest, your algorithm brilliantly capturing exactly what’s going to tickle your fancy – but it’s just a time sucker, a way to keep your brain and mind up way past your bedtime, scrolling past your necessary sleep cycle and taking up residence in spaces better suited for peace and tranquility. To that end, I’m limiting phone time to my waking hours, and even then I’m not on it as much as I used to be. It’s a healthier, happier space. I’m touching the grass and it’s lovely.
Mercury moves into retrograde motion today, and if its pre-shadow mayhem is any indication of how this one is going to go, we are all royally fucked, minus anything royal about it. As if that wasn’t enough, we also have a full moon. The less said these days, the better, so on with the weekly blog recap…
A friend recently asked if I was still on Cloud 9 after some happy outcome, and I replied without thinking or knowing what I was even saying, “Maybe Cloud 7.”
I was going to look it up for you, to share the origin of the term ‘Cloud 9’ but after a half-hearted Google search I gave up because I just don’t give a shit. If you’re reading this, you have access to Google. Do your own research.
As for the ‘Cloud 7’ answer, it feels more fitting than originally intended. Some summers are Cloud 7 summers; they can’t all be Cloud 9. That’s life. We deal with it.
Before anyone settles in and starts to celebrate summer fun, I have some terrible news. We are in the pre-shadow of another episode of Mercury in retrograde motion, which officially begins June 29 and runs until July 23, and things are already ridiculously wonky. It’s the very last thing I need right now, so of course it’s arriving just on schedule in the way the universe so adores fucking with me this year. For some of us Virgos, this is said to be the time we are moving into our super villain eras, and at this point I’m fucking here for it. Virgos always bring the receipts, we shoot to kill, and leave no regrets.
Word of advice: don’t come for me unless I call you.
Second word of advice: don’t come for me if I call you. It won’t end well.
To combat the inevitable pain and harm I will cause (because I’m only human and when pushed too far I push back) I’ve been focusing on my daily meditations, as they’re often the only point in the day when I can feel calm and at peace. The rest of this pre-shadow period has been icky and weird and agitated. There’s a general uneasiness to the atmosphere, and unsteadiness and tension that shouldn’t be part of the start of summer.
