Finally letting myself have a piece of summer
August update: Things are weird and its ok
In the middle of the night it’s crickets. In the middle of the day it’s cicadas. Some times of the day it’s both. This wavering beautiful buzzing music of August both puts me to sleep and keeps me awake. My morning phone alarm has been set to the song Green Arrow by Yo La Tengo for years now. It’s the only song I can wake up to. Even the lightest little chime from the ringtone library startles me awake. I don’t like to be startled awake! This song softly and kindly wakes me in the quiet of the morning, because it begins with a soft fade-in of the sound of crickets. It is also a very nice song all the way through.
At night in August if the window is open, I will wake up nearly once an hour. I realized it’s because I will hear the crickets outside through the window and it tricks my mind into thinking my alarm is going off. So I think I have to sleep with the window closed in August.
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I got upset last year when they were putting the new boiler in at my studio when they ripped out a pokeberry plant because it was blocking the door. Pokeberry plants look so cool, like they are from another planet. I love their poisonous bright pink juice even though I have to wear latex gloves and it fades so quick into brown anyway. I love how weird the plants look as if they were generated by AI on AI mushrooms and pasted into an average field or parking lot. I love these magenta freakberries! I noticed this month that the pokeberry came back even stronger than it was last year by the door to the boiler. I guess they do that. Yay for me!
I got obsessed with goldenrod the last couple of years in August. So in spring, I didn’t pick any from my front garden bed. Not one sprout. Well, I think I took it a little too far. It’s great that the bees have a lot of yellow flowers to pollenate, and I will sure have a lot of dye to make, but a goldenrod forest is covering the entire front of our house now and the anemones are less abundant…
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I decided that the theme of August in terms of what I am doing inside my house is cleaning closets. It’s the best. We have this one closet that I used to use as a dumping ground for getting things out of my sight since we moved in a decade ago. Out of sight, out of mind! Peace everlasting! Well, until it finally got to this point a couple of weeks ago where I couldn’t retrieve anything from the closet without everything falling out, so I avalanched it all on purpose (fun!) and onto the floor (very dusty!) and got to reorganize it and donate a lot of stuff. I have been wanting to do this for so long. The closet is so immensely beautiful now, with 80% less mystery inside, guaranteed. So organized, so satisfying, with each item accessible and not in a pile. Even though when the door closes and it’s out of sight, there is something in my mind that still feels the relief.
Maybe out of sight doesn’t always mean out of mind and everything invisible makes a difference.
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In my studio I don’t have a deadline right now so I am finding childlike joy in getting absorbed in dripping little drops of citric acid water onto different ink colors and watching them change from teal-ish to pink and then adding yellow (goldenrod of course) and it reminds me of that weird superman flavor of ice cream, and how after all of the Augusts of my life I have no idea what the flavors are. This isn’t the palette of the month surprisingly, those colors are waiting for water to evaporate but I am very excited to write about those and send next week, and maybe this is just the beginning of another palette exploration with ink + pH modifiers.
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Business is interesting. I love making printed goods and never won’t love that. And, e-commerce is strange in the summer of an election year. So is being a human person. Capitalism is saying “work extra hard, churn, don’t get behind, don’t get lost!” and every part of my current reality and deep mind and grounded body and open hearted soul are saying “Oh, my dude, please, you can relax, trust me, it’s all ok, I promise.” The thing is, working extra hard has not been yielding extra results, so I want to just lean in to that right now and stop try-try-trying to know what every solution is to everything unknown. I am yearning to be in reality and trust things will even out. To be so grateful for what I have. I’m trying to not miss out on reality altogether - this beautiful weather, the beautiful color-filled life I get to live. Everyone always talks about finding their “new normal” these days and I am realizing now in August of 2024 that normal no longer exists and never will again and there is no such thing. Every day I am finding my always-new and always-not-normal and then the next day again, accepting the weird even when it’s immensely uncomfortable.
Side note: Henry is playing the harmonica in the background right now which makes me feel like a character in a movie with a case of the vibes - oh woe is me, but isn’t this song quite nice, this is what we have and it’s good and it’s getting us through.
If I know one thing it is that living lightly will really do me wonders for the rest of summer. If things that are usually normal are now weird, I might as well enjoy the little things I do have so much access too. Being with crickets in liminal space, disappearing into a goldenrod forest, becoming a droplet of color, shifting…
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This is the last piece of this summer, how am I going to spend it?
How are you?
I love Green Arrow so so much. It’s the first song I play on my shuffled sleep mix nearly every night! Funny that I fall asleep to the song you wake to. I have my alarm set to birds chirping and it is lovely. Definitely no startling alarm clocks for me! I like a gentle nature-sounds nudge 💛💛