I love summer because the nostalgia writes itself. 8:30p has become early evening. Last night, I walked along Dean Street and I looked up to watch the sky darken in the strange way it does before something big happens. Bluer, somehow, with light fighting through. Eye towards the sky, wondering at rain.
Usually the Dean Street community garden is closed, but this night found it open and empty. I walked past and then doubled back — that feeling of “how can I not?”. I confirmed the emptiness with myself and stood, watching everything be quiet. I saw seven fireflies. I watched them turn on and off, floating. Lately, crying has felt as effortless and strangely system-ed as an open valve, and moments of beauty rush the tears out with little to no pressure.
Summer is like that, comically saturated in emotion. When you think about the details, the world becomes extraordinary. Little bugs that float and flash, miraculous! Rain smells like something is about to happen, miraculous! The yawn of morning, before it gets hot. The sigh of evening, which stretches on forever. Ten days, at least, in one.
The ache of summer reverberates just as strongly as the romance of it. The shadow of the afternoon, where you awake from a nap and wonder where you’re supposed to be, where everyone is supposed to be. The curse of memory’s symmetry: going to Rockaway this time, then that one, then the one before. In love each time, in different ways. Each breath has the potential to catch, the intake can be sharp. Ridiculously, I long to go back to summer camp. Change is always rumbling, but thoughts jolt from dreams. Suddenly, I want to do nothing. Suddenly, I need cucumber and cold soba noodles. Suddenly, I think about babies. Suddenly, each of the old stories is flimsy, slanted, shed.
I’m not really eating tomatoes lately, because the acid isn’t worth it. Instead, I use them as cooling devices. My apartment is on the top floor and, if you haven’t heard, it has been very hot. So I have taken the tomatoes from the fridge and held them on my belly, my chest, in between my eyebrows. I wish to cool my brain. I kind of feel genius for doing this. Fancying them as a muse, I paint the tomatoes in watercolor. I remember how the chef I worked with last summer taught me how to make tomato water, which is exactly what it sounds like. I try to find that pink-ish red, the color of blood diluted by a lot.
There is no point in even attempting to stop the associations. They, too, have gone valve-style. Growing up, I would spend my summers with my grandparents in Portland. My Grandma had the most beautiful and expansive garden — edenic. Before dinner, often, the rain would prepare itself. I would run out to the garden, right before the release, to grab tomatoes from the hot beds. The soil still radiating the sun’s heat, everything warm to the touch and smelling sweet. The feeling that something was about to happen.
When the thunder started last night, and I smelled the rain, I smelled the tomatoes, too. After wine, I got home. I am moving tomorrow, so my space is packed up. I admire the emptiness. No cool air, as I mentioned, so I have taken to sleeping mostly naked in front of the fan. The bed unclothed, no sheets. The space unclothed, everything I brought has gone away. I haven’t been able to sleep past 5:30 am lately, but falling asleep is effortless and tidal.
I awake to a flash, and a drastic change of temperature. Lightening! A jolt of rain gushing from above. I scan the street, the intersection — no one outside. What strange emptiness! Still mostly asleep, a thought in my mind: “I have to tell her about this! Don’t forget. She will love it.”
And unconscious again, then awake before sun. How bad can 5 hours be, really, each night? I guess we’ll find out. More importantly: who needed to know about the lightening and the jolt of storm? Who was I thinking of? I try to recall but, for the life of me, I cannot remember.