It's hard to describe a July mood, but maybe I could try. I'm writing this sitting directly opposite an AC cranked up as high as it'll go, hair piled high, drinking a single shot of espresso poured over half a pint of ice. The thing is, July is a sweltering month. But under the relentless heat and suffocating humidity, the fuss and forced cheer of colder days withers away, and only the holiest things in life remain. Dirty feet. Scraped knees. Sweaty hair. Feet pounding a pavement. Tomatoes on toast, strawberries on cream, fish on olives. The days stretch out before me, dizzyingly long and bright and there's all the time in the world to do everything, see everyone, go to the market, to the park, and walk home slowly hours (hours) later in the setting sun. I feel melodramatically, obnoxiously, ridiculously immortal but somehow, time is running out, and there aren't enough days in the world to do it all, feel it all. It's cancer season, the season of joy, depression, of meanness, a momentary awareness.
I'm still not very good at treating my twenties carelessly. The decisions I make with my life haunt me, because now more than ever, they are utterly and wholly mine. And I can't help but uselessly wonder, years from now, what I'll think of the life I ended up with: the life I'm piecing together today with apprehension and hope and naivete. This time last year, I refused to entertain the thought of getting older. I was frozen at twenty-three and saw no reason to jump ahead two years into my "late twenties". But with age comes a kind of weariness that is good for minds prone to pointless ennui. Maybe not a weariness, but a relief in the insignificance our existences and inevitability of complacence. And now, after twilit evenings spent bent over shared dessert plates, and impromptu weekend breakfasts with friends, and nights that I don't remember much of anymore but I can tell you I laughed, laughed quite a lot actually, this year I am looking forward to waking up on my birthday, and in the early morning light, watching life continue to do what it has always done. Simply go on.
It's hard to describe a July mood because everything is just so much. The pangs and delights of life reverberate with equal force through us, and we exist right in the middle of our contradictions. We're blissful one second, and flooded with sadness and bewilderment the next. Humid days end in torrential rain, but the storm dies just as quickly as it springs, and by midnight, the windows are flung open to let the warm breeze that follows fill my home. I spend my evenings catching old movies at the theatre, revisiting memories from high school I thought I'd long forgotten. I don't like nostalgia actually, but there's something about succumbing to it with fondness, maybe a little ruefulness on a summer night. There's thai iced tea ice cream, but there's also the hair escaping the bun you just put it in, mosquito bites on your ankles, and sunscreen that makes your eyes sting. There's salads, and I do love salads, but sometimes they have fruit in them. The flavours simply don’t make sense. Why combine a blueberry — sweet and acidic—and kale—hearty and grassy—when you could indulge in them separately? But the bite of life can feel a little that— disjointed, jarring, unpleasant. And in July, I stick around for the aftertaste.
I know. I know that the concept of a life having lows and highs isn't unique to July. Maybe to you, July is simply to be tolerated. But to me, July is when the mundane becomes magical, and the joys of life are distilled down to their purest form—an open road, a nice cloud, sandy shoes, stolen glances, fingers stained with cherry juice—and the sorrows of life melt away, trickling down my fingers before I can swallow them and feel their weight my belly. Summer solstice has come and gone, and the days are already getting shorter, and I'm already getting older. We never seem to have enough time together, but I hardly feel frantic about it, because I am too busy chasing a sunset that's just out of reach. I am free, levitating on hot air, and every moment of sadness, of dreaming and cursing is only an electrifying reminder that I am alive.