The Summer of the Rest of Your Life

I've been trying to write about what it feels like to be newly graduated. Every time I sit down the words come, but by the end of it they don't feel adequate. Or maybe they feel self important. What do I know? Not enough. These days are strange and unwieldy. I try to wrangle them into submission by writing, making plans, setting goals. It feels like summer, and yet not quite the summers I've known my entire life. An old friend and a stranger.

Yesterday my friend Ruth came over and she, my mom, and I made gelatin prints with leaves and paint and fabric. It's a quintessential summer activity for us- making art projects for the fun of it, no pressure, no expectations, just enjoying making a mess. At the end of it we have twenty or so squares of printed fabric and no idea what to do with them all. Mom says maybe we could turn them into a quilt, but I kind of like the fact that they don't have a purpose. I like that not everything needs to be in service to something else.

Later, Ruth and I are talking about how it feels to be done with school (for now). I know that this is the source my uncertainty, this weird pendulum of days. I feel urgency, and I feel it bad. Every decision acts like something that effects all of the strands of time unraveling in front of me. When I was in school, for some reason, wasting time didn't feel as unforgivable. I could spend a couple of hours watching youtube videos and it was okay, if only because it was in a larger container. I could waste time because I had a deadline to pull me back into the work. Now, though, that container is gone. That container is the rest of my life. Now, it's entirely up to me to delegate my time, and I feel more guilty about wasting it because wasting it feels like wasting my life. 

Of course, I know intellectually that my time has always been mine, and it didn't suddenly become mine after I graduated. I've always had the choice of what to do with it, even though I didn't always use it wisely. I know I should use this new-found urgency to my advantage, but it feels like tug-of-war sometimes. I'm scared of losing it, because then I'll slip back into my old ways, with nothing to keep the idleness in check. But if I hold it too close, my whole life stretches in front of me, paralyzing. If I let urgency rule, even my most productive days are never enough.

That's why Ruth and I dubbed this "the summer of the rest of our lives." It feels like any other summer. It feels like I'll be going back to school in September. But this summer will blend effortlessly into fall, with no first day of school to mark the transition. This summer is the beginning of all other summers that will arrive unannounced, without ceremony.

And I know, eventually, these wild, expansive days will filter back into containers: I'll get a job. I'll have deadlines and appointments and obligations to people other than myself. The terrifying responsibility of being sole master of my days will loosen.

I keep coming back to that Mary Oliver quote, the one that insists, "Tell me, what do you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" I know I don't have to figure it all out this second. I know I have time, even when it feels like it's unraveling too fast. So I'll keep asking that question, keep letting it guide me. I'll lean into urgency and away from idleness. I'll try and cherish these container-less days.

Coming Home

I've been back in the US for a month now. That's enough time to recover from jet lag, fall back into old routines, and forget about my time abroad (not!). Being home has been a bit of a roller coaster. I attended University of Houston's Boldface writing conference, went on a family trip to Joshua Tree National Park, and I've spent a lot of time figuring how to not waste what is conceivably my last summer to fall between two semesters.

This summer, my friends are scattered across the country. Most of them are busy with summer jobs or internships. Me? I'm taking this time to work on the projects that have been bumping around in my head for months. I'm writing. I'm brainstorming. I'm creating something out of nothing. It's a little chaotic and a little slow, but I'm discovering that I get bored working on just one project at a time. I like the challenge and variety of having several plates in the air. It's been working out, too, as long as I don't spend too much time deciding what to work on first ;) (Ah, indecision, the devilish cousin of procrastination).

Even with my new-found determination, and certainly enough projects to keep my hands busy and my mind in the present, I still find myself longing for the old-world charm of Florence and the vibrancy of London. The answer, I think, is appreciating the little things that make home, home. Things like iced coffee (the staple of every good summer). The way the light falls at golden hour. The warmth of my living room. My huge, beautiful, mess of a desk. So yeah, sometimes I wake up feeling homesick for my dream-scicle colored bedroom in Florence, and my too-warm flat in London, but these are the side affects of leaving my heart in too many places at once.

Coming home hasn't been easy, but a month later things are finally starting to fall into place. I'm happy to be here. I'm happy to have the incredible gift of time, support, and resources to do the things I love. I'm happy to have a head in two worlds, a heart in two or three or five places. Stay tuned for updates on what I'm working on, and a couple posts on my time in London!

Taken on my last day in beautiful London, at our home tube stop

Vignettes from the Recent Past, Pictures from Today

I. 

More often than not, Cedar Rapids feels like one big strip mall. Most of the green spaces are hemmed in by concrete. The city smells different depending on what flavor of cereal the Quaker Oats factory is churning out, and on sunny Saturdays the streets fill with motorcycles. Sometimes, though, I find things I never expect. Across the river from downtown there is an amphitheater that plays the sounds of Canada Geese over loud speakers every fifteen minutes. Nearby is a sculpture made out of recycled glass that creates a fun-house mirror effect when you stand underneath it. Every time I feel like everything has become homogenous, I find a random stretch of road made out bricks or a charming, vine covered building. While I occasionally wish I'd gone to school in place closer to nature (usually while scrolling through Instagram), Cedar Rapids is teaching me that everything can be interesting, if you let it. 

II.

After a long winter, sunny days are a shock to the system. Yesterday, our first official day of summer, my friends and I laid in the grass and took selfies. Somehow we had gone the whole year without getting a single picture of the four of us together. The moment was both sublime and melancholy: one of my friends is transferring to another school, and another is going to be abroad next semester. As I watch the graduation tents go up on the quad, I can't help feeling that quintessential stirring that accompanies every step into the unknown. In just a few days time I'll be on a plane headed for Paris. I'm both excited and stressed, and meanwhile summer has me intoxicated with heady feelings of freedom. Every day for the past few days, the clouds roll in around 4pm. The wind picks up. The temperature drops. The rain falls at an angle, with a force that stings bare skin. Everything is motion. Summer is here, and the world is all a-flutter. 

III.

Every day I see pictures of places I want to live someday. The impossibly green pastures of Ireland. The deep, dark conifers of the Northwest. Blue sky stretching above West Texas like a drum. It makes me want to speed up time, run faster, do more. What's lost in the gap between here and there? Every day I face the delusion that I should be somewhere else, when really this is the only place I can be, and the only place I am. I am reminded of this every time I see a familiar face, or double over laughing at something a friend has said. I am reminded on late night pancake runs and Sunday morning conversations with my roommates. Every time the wanderlust catches hold, it's the people that keep me grounded. This is my little place in this big, messy world. I'm not going to waste my time wishing it was somewhere else.

A Perfect Summer

I’ve always idealized summer. It exists in my mind as a pocket of time untouched by the laws of every-day life: there are no obligations, and endless possibilities. Instead of being paralyzed by boredom, in my summer, you embrace freedom, harness it. You perfect the act of doing nothing. And of course, the absence of school means that your creativity thrives, and somehow you get more done than you thought possible. I’m aware that this is a paradox, but it is an image I cling to, and it’s been grounded so deeply into my childhood that I can’t seem to separate myself from it. And honestly, I don’t want to. Because when I think about summer, I don’t just think about my perfect summer. There is magic in real summers, too. I’ve seen it first hand. I’ve seen it in the in the stretching of the days, the luxuriously long sunsets, where that impossible green foliage that blankets every tree is momentarily dipped in gold. Later it subsides to a deep blue, and the air is a color like something out of a Monet painting.  I find it in the tiny sandstorm created by the cream as I pour it into a tall glass of iced coffee. It is the morning walks I take with mother and my dog, down a curbless street, filled with birdsong. Occasionally, there are swimming pools. Sometimes, there are long drives in cars under an endless sky. There is rain, too. The kind of summer thunderstorm I haven’t experienced in years. It is a wild rain, punctuated by rumbles that shake the windows of our house, and my mother stands on the front porch, transfixed. 

This is the summer I grew up with. Over the years, it’s changed slightly. It’s been invaded by summer reading books for school, not all of which were bad, and summer assignments which always were. When I learned to drive there was always a nagging sense that I had to go somewhere. Why stay at home when you have a whole city to explore? Still, I often guiltily chose to sit in the backyard and read a book instead. Maybe I idealize summer too much, but when I hear people say that summer is “boring,” I feel indignant. You say the first few weeks weeks are fun. There’s the novelty of it, I guess. But after that, as June yawns into July it’s just another summer, and you don’t know what to do with yourself. I have no patience for this attitude. If you are scared of boredom, your summer will be over before it began. It’s how you use boredom, how you acknowledge it but don’t let it defeat you. Summers are a gift. They are something to be cherished, held in your hands like the blueberries you picked by the bucket-full. Summers are a time capsule to a time when you didn’t need the internet to distract you, when the outdoors was a place you still frequented. And yes, I know it’s hot. I live in a place where humidity makes you feel like you are swimming rather than walking, and mosquitoes gather in prehistoric swarms. In the afternoon the heat presses against windows, and the world is a bug trapped in amber.  

If there is a message here, it is this: Find your perfect summer. Take time to marvel at a rainbow in the arc of a sprinkler, and spend an afternoon in shade that is just cool enough to be bearable. Jump into lakes. Swing from tire swings. If anything, summer reminds us that one moment can feel like an eternity. Inhabit that eternity. Make a home there, and the summer is yours.

Summer Reading

I had so many posts planned for today. I wanted to finally give you a recap of my trip to New York. I wanted to write a response to Stephanie Morrill's post about wether or not teen writers should have a blog. I wanted to review the amazing and perplexing book The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards by Kristopher Jansma. But as I was staring at my newly re-arranged bookshelves, and at the stacks of books still littering my floor, I realized that there was only one post I could write today, and it's largely  for myself. I hope you find it mildly interesting, and I promise to have at least one of the aforementioned posts up by the end of the week. Here, without further ado, is the list of books I want to read this summer.*

1. When a Crocodile Eats the Sun by Peter Godwin (required summer reading)

2. The Magicians by Lev Grossman

3. Ready, Okay! by Adam Cadre

4. You Are One of Them by Elliot Holt

5. The Disappointment Artist by Jonathan Lethem (started)

6. A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories by Flannery O'Connor

7. Seabuiscut by Laura Hillenbrand

8. Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald

9. Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall by Kazuo Ishiguro

10. The Starboard Sea by Amber Dermont

11. Birds of a Lesser Paradise by Megan Mayhew Bergman

* It is completely possible that I will not finish all of these before mid-august, but I'm going to try! 

What books are you reading this summer? No, really. I'd like to know. 

Also, side note: How freaking awesome is it that I actually have time to read anything? I love summer.