Those three words go beautifully together, especially since we’ve turned the season to fall. I only half-facetiously posted on social media that I consider a cider doughnut to be the dietetic and nutritional equivalent of an apple, so this works in a diet. Mind over waist size.
As for these beauties, it was the scent of them frying that first alerted me to their presence as I perused the plants at George’s on a recent weekend morning. I knew immediately what they were, and was powerless to resist. Of course the minimum in a box was ten, but even then it was a battle with Andy over who would get the most. (I think I may have edged him out by one – well, two if we’re doing the real math.)
Such delights are the recompense for fall. Cozy comforts. Heat balms. Solace for sinister weather. When COVID first hit at the end of winter, I began baking a bit more, which took a backseat when summer arrived and the grill beckoned. Now that fall is here, and focus returns to the interior, I’ll warm up the oven again, with breads and cookies and crumbles. I finally managed to find some yeast so risable breads are again on the agenda. The season of comfort food is at hand. (Now let’s get it in my belly.)
“I ask no favor for my sex. All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks.” ~ Ruth Bader Ginsburg
“For both men and women the first step in getting power is to become visible to others, and then to put on an impressive show. . . . As women achieve power, the barriers will fall. As society sees what women can do, as women see what women can do, there will be more women out there doing things, and we’ll all be better off for it.” ~ Ruth Bader Ginsburg
“When a thoughtless or unkind word is spoken, best tune out. Reacting in anger or annoyance will not advance one’s ability to persuade.” ~ Ruth Bader Ginsburg
“Yet what greater defeat could we suffer than to come to resemble the forces we oppose in their disrespect for human dignity?” ~ Ruth Bader Ginsburg
The flowers always come more vibrantly at this time of the year, as if sensing their limited time before a hard frost kills them off permanently. Such is the case with these volunteer morning glories. They’ve been self-seeding so prolifically and for so long that they’ve become a bit of a nuisance, so this year I pulled most of them out in part of the clearing and editing process that marked much of our garden efforts. I left a few vines to climb through the Korean lilac and Joe Pye Weed, and here are some of the results.
For better or worse, morning glories remind me of the earliest bit of fall – that tense time when school is about to begin and we plunge into the routine of routine again, returning to schedules and time constraints that seemed so much more bearable under the sun of summer. This year fall looks a little different, and we are all still adjusting.
In the meantime, the morning glories are giving out one final show, reminding us that there is beauty in the world, even as we approach winter…
BETTY, I WON’T MAKE ASSUMPTIONS
ABOUT WHY YOU SWITCHED YOUR HOMEROOM BUT
I THINK IT’S CAUSE OF.…ME
BETTY… ONE TIME I WAS RIDING ON MY SKATEBOARD
WHEN I PASSED YOUR HOUSE
IT’S LIKE I COULDN’T BREATHE
YOU HEARD THE RUMORS FROM INEZ
YOU CAN’T BELIEVE A WORD SHE SAYS
MOST TIMES, BUT THIS TIME IT WAS TRUE
THE WORST THING THAT I EVER DID
WAS WHAT I DID TO YOU
While her ‘folklore’ album was my soundtrack for summer, Taylor Swift recently released ‘Betty’ which is rather more fitting for fall, considering its high-school storyline of teen drama. It’s one of the best story songs I’ve heard in recent years ~ compelling and powerful with a few well-chosen words to convey an entire tableau of the emotional mayhem that happens when you’re only seventeen. My work pal Andy said this was his favorite song from the album and the reason for why it resonated so much was that he could relate to the guy in the song, and I can totally see it. A playboy with a heart of gold is impossible not to love, even if there’s emotional wreckage left in his wake. I can see Andy filling that role with ease. (And I was totally Inez, I admit – but this time it was true! Still am on most days.)
BUT IF I JUST SHOWED UP AT YOUR PARTY
WOULD YOU HAVE ME? WOULD YOU WANT ME?
WOULD YOU TELL ME TO GO FUCK MYSELF?
OR LEAD ME TO THE GARDEN?
IN THE GARDEN WOULD YOU TRUST ME
IF I TOLD YOU IT WAS JUST A SUMMER THING?
I’M ONLY SEVENTEEN, I DON’T KNOW ANYTHING
BUT I KNOW I MISS YOU
Ahh, high school drama and trauma ~ always so heightened and extreme, and simultaneously innocuous and fleeting. How much hurt we knowingly and unknowingly inflict on those we love, those who mean the most to us. I’ve long maintained that it’s sometimes more painful to hurt someone else than to be the one who’s getting hurt. The sort of pain that transpires when you’re the one doing the hurting can haunt you far longer than the pain you get when on the receiving end, and it’s a heartache that shades and blunts all the happiness you might feel forever after. I didn’t learn that lesson until it was too late, and by then those moments had been carved permanently into my heart, and the awfulness I sometimes perpetrated became a stain on everything good I might have done.
BETTY, I KNOW WHERE IT ALL WENT WRONG
YOUR FAVORITE SONG WAS PLAYING FROM THE FAR SIDE OF THE GYM
I WAS NOWHERE TO BE FOUND
I HATE THE CROWDS, YOU KNOW THAT
PLUS, I SAW YOU DANCE WITH HIM
YOU HEARD THE RUMORS FROM INEZ
YOU CAN’T BELIEVE A WORD SHE SAYS
MOST TIMES, BUT THIS TIME IT WAS TRUE
THE WORST THING THAT I EVER DID
WAS WHAT I DID TO YOU
I have always lived in the belief of having no regrets, because we are all the sum of our history and experiences, and changing just one of those little decisions or moments might change all the work and effort we have executed in the hopes of being better. Now I’m not so sure. I think I might have done things that made that road easier, that might have healed the hurt a little faster. I would have been kinder ~ that wouldn’t have cost anything, it wouldn’t have hurt anyone, and it wouldn’t have been that difficult were it not for a cold sense of pride and perfection that steeled me against a world that wasn’t always out to get me. I would have been more open and vulnerable, allowing my heart to be broken because it would eventually ~ no matter what ~ and that might not have been the worst thing then. I would have also done better at mending those hearts I did break, instead of finding excuses to be angry and cruel, and leaving them behind.
BUT IF I JUST SHOWED UP AT YOUR PARTY
WOULD YOU HAVE ME? WOULD YOU WANT ME?
WOULD YOU TELL ME TO GO FUCK MYSELF?
OR LEAD ME TO THE GARDEN?
IN THE GARDEN WOULD YOU TRUST ME
IF I TOLD YOU IT WAS JUST A SUMMER THING?
I’M ONLY SEVENTEEN, I DON’T KNOW ANYTHING, BUT I KNOW I MISS YOU
We can’t go back though. We can’t magically fix the past even if we do our best to make amends. There is grace in the effort to try, but there’s no way to do it without leaving a scar, or stirring up the muck that might have settled in the ensuing years. I’d like to think I have forgiven and been forgiven for my own mistakes and faults, but forgiveness is a messy business. Rarely completely fulfilling, it’s become more than specific closure I seek, and more about making the world a little safer and less difficult for the people in my life now. It would be easy to slip into anger and rage at the person I once was, and at those who I ended up hurting. That’s the thing about hurting people ~ the darkness feeds upon itself, multiplying while ricocheting off its own hurt and causing more hurt along the way. Collateral damage. And all that you do unto others will be done more insidiously upon yourself. You just don’t know that yet.
I WAS WALKING HOME ON BROKEN COBBLESTONES JUST THINKING OF YOU
WHEN SHE PULLED UP LIKE A FIGMENT OF MY WORST INTENTIONS
SHE SAID “JAMES, GET IN, LET’S DRIVE.”
THOSE DAYS TURNED INTO NIGHTS
SLEPT NEXT TO HER, BUT I DREAMT OF YOU ALL SUMMER LONG
We don’t always get a second chance to make things right. Especially when those transgressions occurred at the tender age of seventeen. At that time in life it feels like all you have is time, but it moves quickly, and it distracts and destroys, and before you know it you’re in your 40’s and haven’t learned a goddamned thing about how not to hurt people. Fall brings it all back, and I remember fall in Amsterdam. I remember football games and band practice and cornfields filled with crows. I remember the boy who killed himself and the girl whose heart I broke. I remember raking leaves and hating my family and wondering why I should be the one to survive. The smell of burning wood. The sting of salt in my eyes. The longing no one explained. The loneliness. My own broken wings.
What would I do if I could go back and do it all over again? What would any of us do? Would we whisper to our old selves what moves to make, what moves to avoid? Would we write notes of guidance, leaving our shadows with explicit instructions on what was about to happen? It wouldn’t make a difference, not in my world anyway. There was nothing I would have heard back then, especially if it came from my own voice.
BETTY, I’M HERE ON YOUR DOORSTEP
AND I PLANNED IT OUT FOR WEEKS NOW
BUT IT’S FINALLY SINKIN’ IN
BETTY, RIGHT NOW IS THE LAST TIME
I CAN DREAM ABOUT WHAT HAPPENS WHEN
YOU SEE MY FACE AGAIN
THE ONLY THING I WANNA DO
IS MAKE IT UP TO YOU
SO I SHOWED UP AT YOUR PARTY
YEAH, I SHOWED UP AT YOUR PARTY
And so we have James, showing up at Betty’s party, all hope and promise and the possibility of redemption, like all of us trying to make up for a summer of mistakes, for a stretch of unforgivable actions, for everything we didn’t know back then. No matter what might happen afterward, in that one single moment there is grace. Solace. Healing. In the act of trying there is a humility that becomes its own balm, and the way we have to forgive ourselves.
YEAH, I SHOWED UP AT YOUR PARTY
WILL YOU HAVE ME? WILL YOU LOVE ME?
WILL YOU KISS ME ON THE PORCH IN FRONT OF ALL YOUR STUPID FRIENDS?
IF YOU KISS ME, WILL IT BE JUST LIKE I DREAMED IT?
WILL IT PATCH YOUR BROKEN WINGS?
I’M ONLY SEVENTEEN, I DON’T KNOW ANYTHING
BUT I KNOW I MISS YOU
We never quite discover what Betty does ~ the song is left open in the best possible way. No one is guaranteed a happy ending. Happy endings are rare when you really think about it. We also have a somewhat skewed view of what makes a happy ending ~ is it really about battling all the illness and hurt and making it to an ancient age through years of discomfort and fatigue and pain? Isn’t a happy ending when we go out at our prime, at our most jubilant and hopeful, struck down at the height of all that we will ever be? I don’t know. Fall asks such questions in preparation for winter. I’m not quite ready to answer. Let a few hard frosts embolden our resilience.
We can try to go back and right the wrongs of the past by being better in the present and future. Those of us who have made mistakes can spend a lifetime making up for them, and maybe that makes us better people. So here we are again, standing on the doorstep of what we’re going to be in the next moment, standing on the doorstep of what we still might become.
STANDING IN YOUR CARDIGAN
KISSIN’ IN MY CAR AGAIN
STOPPED AT A STREETLIGHT
YOU KNOW I MISS YOU
Spoiler alert: if you haven’t already seen ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’, #1) what the fuck is wrong with you, and #2) proceed with caution as a minor plot-twist is revealed with this post, and it’s my favorite twist in the movie, so go Netflix or stream it or whatever the kids are doing to watch movies these days, then come on back for this one.
Ok, are those culturally-bereft goons gone now? Let’s get on with the brief snippet of profound realization that recently occurred as I was re-watching this 80’s gem. We all see ourselves in certain characters of movies or television shows or theatrical pieces, and that’s how something really resonates with us. Most of the time it helps if those touchstones are with the main protagonist – those are the objects of art that speak to our hearts. Now and then, though, we have to step back and realize we are not always the main character in the story. More of us could use that lesson today, when we all feel we deserve the fucking trophy.
Such was the startling horror that greeted the sudden understanding that in the world of Ferris Bueller, I was not the cool cat known as Mr. Bueller, or the poignant, depressed best friend, or even the down-to-earth glam girlfriend. Oh no. I wasn’t even the scene-stealing Mr. Rooney or his hapless secretary. Nope. In this fictional narrative I was quite clearly, and annoyingly, Ferris’s sister Jeanie. Sure, I get Charlie Sheen’s tongue down my throat before he went batshit crazy and lost all his hotness, but that’s small recompense for such a nasty character.
Thankfully, it’s not entirely without redemption, as Jeanie provides the breath of relief in the climactic tension-ridden scene of whether he gets caught or not, and she turns into the heroine of the whole thing.
“I know that readers truly committed to racial equality will join me on this journey of interrogating and shedding our racist ideas. But if there is anything I have learned during my research, it’s that the principal producers and defenders of racist ideas will not join us. And no logic or fact or history book can change them, because logic and facts and scholarship have little to do with why they are expressing racist ideas in the first place.†― Ibram X. Kendi
This is the time of the year when the woolly bear caterpillar supposedly reveals what sort of winter we are going to have. I’m not sure how much faith I place in such folklore – this smells vaguely of that groundhog nonsense where no one can make heads or tails of anything other than in February there will always be several more weeks of winter, the specific duration of which is going to be whatever it’s going to be, and there’s no creature on earth that’s going to predict or change that.
As for the particulars of how one tells what sort of winter this fuzzy little thing is predicting, go google that shit. I’m not your show-shaman. And what good will coming of knowing whether the winter is going to be mild or harsh? It’s going to be winter and it’s going to suck. Boom – there’s your woolly wisdom, and the folly in trying to tell the future.
(Of course, if you are a soothsayer who can read such fortune in the bands of a caterpillar, by all means shoot me some advance warning. It’s nice to be prepared, even if one doesn’t entirely believe such nonsense. We hedge our bets here.)
This magnificent lace-leaf philodendron was a quick, unplanned purchase in late spring. After several less-than-stellar investments in this large pot (failed junipers, evergreens, and red-twigged dogwoods) I didn’t bother with anything other than a common home-improvement store specimen, which was only about a foot and a half tall.
Now it’s about three feet high and five to six feet wide after a successful summer on the sunny front porch, lots of water and plant food, and just a touch of love. I texted around and finally found someone willing to take it in before the first hard frost withers it to the ground. My pal Heath picked it up and will try to transition it into indoor life. I’m just thankful it has a chance. We don’t have the room or the light for it, and it’s too beautiful and doing too well to simply give up on it.
It’s also rather valuable – I saw two philodendrons at Faddegon’s of roughly the same size and stature – one was $187 and the other was $247! That means this will double as Heath’s birthday present, whether he knows it or not.
“To be antiracist is to think nothing is behaviorally wrong or right — inferior or superior — with any of the racial groups. Whenever the antiracist sees individuals behaving positively or negatively, the antiracist sees exactly that: individuals behaving positively or negatively, not representatives of whole races. To be antiracist is to deracialize behavior, to remove the tattooed stereotype from every racialized body. Behavior is something humans do, not races do.†― Ibram X. Kendi
More photos from lost posts of wet suits, with ghostly taunting from a pool on the verge of being closed. I remember the water being so warm all season – a shortened season perhaps, and all the more pleasurable for it. Fleeting joys for summer boys.
I tried to get in at least once on every possible sunny day, and I was largely successful. An afternoon float, coupled with a meditation, marked the end of working-from-home sessions – a lovely demarcation that will have to live solely in the meditation realm from here until next spring, and what a long journey that seems right now.
That said, I’m not entirely sad about the situation. Summer was actually pretty decent to us. The plants on the patio are testament to the heat and sun we had. Long lines of sweet potato vines dangle all the way from the canopy to the ground. An angel’s trumpet plant towers high in the sky, still dripping with its gorgeously-scented blooms. And pots filled with ferns have grown up and out, unfurling their fronds in lush tropical splendor.
We will hold onto this visage until the first hard frost, and the memories well into the winter. But I know these plants are tired, and the rest of the garden needs a rest as well. As long as we can try again next year, it’s ok to take a brief nap. We’ve earned it.
“When people are ready to, they change. They never do it before then, and sometimes they die before they get around to it. You can’t make them change if they don’t want to, just like when they do want to, you can’t stop them.” ~ Andy Warhol
IF YOU COULD READ MY MIND LOVE WHAT A TALE MY THOUGHTS COULD TELL JUST LIKE AN OLD TIME MOVIE ABOUT A GHOST FROM A WISHING WELL IN A CASTLE DARK OR A FORTRESS STRONG WITH CHAINS UPON MY FEET YOU KNOW THAT GHOST IS ME
Fall has always been about the drama. This was when the night-time soap operas returned, and in my formative years I was all about the soap operas. New plot lines were set into motion. Cliffhangers were resolved or spun into secondary moments of suspense. The start of the fall television season in general was always an exciting time. Worn-out characters were replaced by new ones, sets were energized, haircuts were revamped, and styles shifted slightly with the times, whether period or modern. In some ways it was a lot like the start of school, when everyone came back slightly altered and reinvented.
Perhaps this year more than ever we are in need of such a re-boot, so I’m taking this moment in time to re-energize my good practices, and curb some of the unhealthier things that have started to become habit (we will stop buying so much chocolate and so many cookies, and instead invest in fresh fruit). My meditation practice will continue as well (on the 25th of this month I’m moving up to 25 minutes per day), and I’ll refocus energy on my mindfulness. When things turn lighter in the summer it gets easier to be more naturally mindful – that will take more effort when there’s not a pool or gardens or a pleasant outdoor day just around the corner.
As for a reinvention here, you may have noticed the darker theme and header and sliders, as befits this marker in history. We are on the precipice of something, and it feels like the middle of night. I’m sidling up to it in the hopes of reconciling myself to the darkness, while glowing a little brighter to make up for it. There is a pair of new categories here as well – Antiracism and Mindfulness – serious topics I’ve been more interested in expounding upon and exploring, and which have naturally grown into what I hope will be substantial pillars of what makes this site vital.
A new season is at hand. A new chance to be better has arrived. The opportunities unfurl to improve from within. Just as we begin a retreat from the outside in, so too do we return to the interior of our mental make-up, and to improving the constitution of our soul.
I DON’T KNOW WHERE WE WENT WRONG BUT THE FEELING’S GONE AND I JUST CAN’T GET IT BACK
“Sometimes people let the same problem make them miserable for years when they could just say, So what. That’s one of my favorite things to say. So what.” ~ Andy Warhol
The whisper, urgent and fierce, came to me in a blackness so dense I couldn’t be sure it was from another human being. For all I knew, and for all I could see in that night, it came from some feral being that was part ghost, part manifestation, and part spirit. But I felt its heat, felt its fetid moisture, and every once in a while I heard the click and grinding of teeth. Then, the ice cold essence of absence, as if its breath crystallized into tiny daggers of ice which fell to the earth like the delicate, barely-heard rustling of snow falling on hard ground.
“Do you hear me? Do you know what I’m saying?”
In that first semester at Brandeis, I was hearing voices in my head. Looking back, it was just the one voice, and it was less an actual voice and more a manifestation of all my doubts and disbeliefs in myself. But it repeated itself, growing more vicious and more relentless as the days turned colder. At the time, I simply wasn’t listening to my heart, and so it spoke for itself. I couldn’t see it then. I couldn’t hear it then. All I felt was confusion.
And the whispers grew increasingly ferocious.
IF YOU COULD READ MY MIND LOVE WHAT A TALE MY THOUGHTS COULD TELL JUST LIKE AN OLD TIME MOVIE ABOUT A GHOST FROM A WISHING WELL IN A CASTLE DARK OR A FORTRESS STRONG WITH CHAINS UPON MY FEET YOU KNOW THAT GHOST IS ME AND I WILL NEVER BE SET FREE AS LONG AS I’M A GHOST YOU CAN SEE
In the family station wagon, I was probably ten years old when this song played over the easy listening station my parents favored. The melody was sweet, the hook was catchy, and the tinge of folksy accessibility made it a natural choice for people who introduced their kids to music through Peter, Paul and Mary. As our wagon careened through the streets of Amsterdam, I sat in the backseat looking out at the world of fall.
I remember passing McNulty Elementary School, where I would attend kindergarten through sixth grade – the formative childhood years that feel simultaneously sweet and dangerous, innocent and somehow teeming with terror. Seeing it in my mind through the lens I’ve chiseled in the past year, I mourn that I couldn’t put voice to my social anxiety and the issues it caused. It was a thread that ran throughout all of my schooling, including that first semester at Brandeis when I was already a young adult. Fall was always terrifying that way, and I went through it all without fully understanding or grasping what was going on behind the scenes.
IF I COULD READ YOUR MIND LOVE WHAT A TALE YOUR THOUGHTS COULD TELL JUST LIKE A PAPERBACK NOVEL THE KIND THE DRUGSTORE SELLS WHEN YOU REACH THE PART WHERE THE HEARTACHES COME THE HERO WOULD BE ME HEROES OFTEN FAIL AND YOU WON’T READ THAT BOOK AGAIN BECAUSE THE ENDING’S JUST TOO HARD TO TAKE
In this, the fall of my 45thyear on earth, I’m beginning to hear that little voice, but unlike it sounded on those fall school days, it comes with nothing frightening or fearful. Instead, it is a gentle guide, nudging me this way or turning me slightly that way, so that I’m always on the right path. The message is finally being heard, even if I don’t always like what is being said, even if it’s going to mean more work, more effort, more confronting those difficult demons so deeply embedded from so many years ago.
Fall is the ideal time for such a reconfiguration: a moment to reset and restart. Right after every restart, the screen has to go dark for a bit. In the past, I would have turned away from the darkness, and possibly offered something lighter and frivolous to counteract the lack of illumination. This year – the wretched beast that is 2020 – I’m not going that traditional route. I’m going to embrace the darkness. I’m going to walk with it, and try to understand it better. I’m going to befriend it and fold it into my life. There is no true daylight without a night that comes before it.
I WALK AWAY LIKE A MOVIE STAR WHO GETS BURNED IN A THREE WAY SCRIPT ENTER NUMBER TWO, A MOVIE QUEEN TO PLAY THE SCENE OF BRINGING ALL THE GOOD THINGS OUT IN ME BUT FOR NOW LOVE LETS BE REAL
I NEVER THOUGHT I COULD ACT THIS WAY AND I’VE GOT TO SAY THAT I JUST DON’T GET IT I DON’T KNOW WHERE WE WENT WRONG BUT THE FEELINGS GONE AND I JUST CAN’T GET IT BACK
Not gonna lie, this fall is likely to be brutal, and in all bluntness I don’t know how we are going to do it. How do you heal a nation so divided? How do you repair and mend all the emotional damage that is still being rendered? How do you socially distance for an entire holiday season?
But everything that has already happened in 2020 has revealed that we can do it, even if nothing is stable, even if there is nothing of which we can be certain anymore. There is something terrifying about that. Something incredibly freeing too. When the notions of safety and security turn out to be tethers, sometimes it’s better that they break.
Into that darkness, may we fall with freely-given abandon, and let it bring about something more beautiful, more colorful, more enriching and more empowering.
Fall begins again…
IF YOU COULD READ MY MIND LOVE WHAT A TALE MY THOUGHTS COULD TELL JUST LIKE AN OLD TIME MOVIE ABOUT A GHOST FROM A WISHING WELL IN A CASTLE DARK OR A FORTRESS STRONG WITH CHAINS UPON MY FEET THE STORY ALWAYS ENDS AND IF YOU READ BETWEEN THE LINES YOU’LL KNOW THAT I’M JUST TRYING TO UNDERSTAND THE FEELING THAT YOU LEFT
I NEVER THOUGHT I COULD FEEL THIS WAY AND I’VE GOT TO SAY THAT I JUST DON’T GET IT I DON’T KNOW WHERE WE WENT WRONG BUT THE FEELING’S GONE AND I JUST CAN’T GET IT BACK
And so summer ends, as quietly and unassumingly as it began, which feels fitting, and fittingly a little sad. The world isn’t having its best moment. It’s not the time to celebrate, and that’s usually what summer is all about. Did we find ways to locate the joy of the season? I think we did, but it was much different from every other summer we’ve had. It wasn’t always easy to lose those traditions, or cut those ties, but there were valuable lessons in that. On with the final part to this summer recap. Tomorrow, fall comes…
We have made it to July in the recap, and within this lovely celebratory summer recap we finally shift into the portion where we finally open the pool! In honor of that happy event, here’s a summer remix slip into the seasonal musical repertoire with Dua Lipa’s ‘Levitating’ (and some help by She-Who-Was-About-To-be-Exiled). Because this summer wasn’t all bad, and glimmers of sunshine and carefree happiness signify the season when a song like this suddenly brings you to your feet.
This Project of the Past was actually the most recent creative project I’ve done, so we only had to go back a year. But what a difference a year makes.
Traditionally, summer is a time of travels, parties, and sunny adventures.
This year, that all took place mostly in our minds, and the power of imagination is what kept us going. A regular schedule of mindful meditation made it mostly manageable. Largely, though, this summer was spent in suspension: waiting for the pool to be opened, waiting for a sense of normalcy to return, waiting for a pandemic to end. Only one of those wishes came true.
Summer was usually the time we got back together with everyone, gathering about the pool and grill, inviting friends for dinner and weekends and impromptu get-togethers when the day looked to be especially brilliant. All of that was absent this season, and there was something very sad and doleful about it. Staying safe meant staying socially isolated since March. For the introvert in me, it wasn’t a difficult lift, but it turns out I am much more social than I realized, and the continued isolation took more of a toll than expected. We made do with social media networks, even as politics made them more miserable than usual.
The most notable things that set this summer apart was how quiet it felt. There are a couple of songs that will be featured in later parts of this recap – for now, let’s inhabit that silence, embrace the quiet, and lean into the stillness. Here’s what happened in the first part of the summer…
