summer solstice, slow-paced days that feel like eternity

listening to shower vinyl by danny scott (again, I’m a creature of habit). my hair is air drying in the summer morning wind with the faint scent of green tea and ylang ylang, drinking a creamy cold oat milk latte. at 9 am, the temperature in the house is still perfect with the light grey paper shades pulled halfway down. sunlight casts shadows on the palm perched atop the cement block. I have resumed inhabiting one of my favorite new spots in the house, the top of the playful white and yellow bookshelf facing the street along the front window in the living room. the white varnish reflects the morning sun and I sit there to soak it in, catch glimpses of grandmothers and grandfathers taking their morning stroll in cute “athletic” outfits. 

this is the first summer in a while that I have been transported back to my lazy childhood summers filled with endless time, playing animal crossing and pokemon, rolling around on the carpet living room floor with fluffy cushions, a glass of lemonade and architecture book propped open. a quiet, peaceful soundscape of summer. where the possibility of boredom tugs at the ends of your hair, and the openness of the past and future blend into one amorphous state. there is only now, there will only be now, and the sun will keep setting later and later. night time might cease to exist! and then… I might forget what the moon likes like? I am swallowed by a sense of eternity in the vastness of the day to day. 

it’s not just my mind that has been floating in this vastness. my stomach has succumbed to it too. while I was asleep, the spaciousness of the hot, dry air circulating in the upper realms of the summer stratosphere descended into my bedroom. it entered through the dark portal of the closet, and slipped out through the sliding door unintentionally left slightly ajar, searching for the girl sprawled across clay colored sheets, heavy with sleep, earnestly moving through the mundane difficulties of her dreamscape. limbs stretched to their maximum wingspan, eyes darting left right right left beneath thick eyelids, long tendrils of black hair winding into itself like a maze, the summer heat sought the promise of respite in this curious black void, and began to move with purpose across the floorboards beneath the floating bed. pausing to admire a particular swirl of wood grain lying underneath two bobby pins and a red silk ribbon for its vague likeness to the swirl of the cosmos the Heat was used to gazing upon from its vantage point in the highest realms of the stratosphere, a dust bunny danced over to witness the magnificent sight as well. “nice to have your company, Heat!  we don’t get many passerby here in dust bunny land, except for the occasional random object propulsed by a foot from the everyday world into our spacious realm. although, I hear our realm is not so different than yours…. where are you headed?” the dust bunny spoke briskly with a hint of saged wisdom. 

to be continued…

(this is a story about how I got really hungry this summer. the heat moves from my mind to my belly and I eat voraciously to satiate it, and to satiatie the vastness inside of me. i look under my bed for inspiration to finish this story, to satiate your boredom sometimes you must find inspiration underneath your bed. the red ribbon might return again in the story, and it may connect with “nine setting suns” and “the satellites send us back to earth.” may or may not also include a fever dream of skinny dipping alone on a remote tropical island.”