Avant Gardener
meditations on august
Late summer can be agony. At the very least, it’s a bit of a downer.
I’ve been watching a lot of Eric Rohmer films, listening to Courtney Barnett and Pet Sounds, finding solace in media that feels as sun-soaked and listless as I do. August is historically my most hysterical month — I don’t do well with endings or nostalgia, both of which make their homes comfortably in the hazy humidity. The entire city smells slightly like steaming garbage; the nights, at least, are beautiful, but they begin to feel more and more frantic, as I search for memories and attempt to squeeze meaning out of abject drunkenness and poor planning. I try to shake the feeling that I’m a clove of garlic, confit-ing in an olive green Le Creuset pot in the kitchen of some prissy millennial marketing agent in San Francisco (Aritzia blazer, laptop-by-the-pool job). She’s making bruschetta for her Thursday night dinner party. She’ll make sure to point out how nice it is to dine al fresco in the summertime. I think I’m just jealous.
My strange hobby du jour: eavesdropping on public transit. It’s not that it isn’t something I always did, at least subconsciously, but now, apparently idea-starved and restless enough to go full creep, I’m making a point of it. I’m not a malicious listener; I try my best to go against my nature, to pass as little judgment as possible. I’m too fatigued to be a critic or even an analyst, so I’m a true-blue reporter. Good reporters can’t be too cruel.
A couple on the Broad Street Line is arguing. I missed the context. Fuck you, he says in an oddly charming sort of half-whine, exasperated. You wish, she retorts. I catch his smile out of the corner of my eye. He leans in to whisper something in her ear; I stop listening. Three’s a crowd.
I’m reminded of a conversation I overheard on a Regional Rail train from Boston to New York a year or so ago. A young couple, she in Fashion Nova-esque garb, he in a Lakers jersey, sat across the aisle next to my friend and I. We attempted furiously to discern whether they had arrived together or just met for the first time on the train, à la Before Sunrise; they had the odd impression of being extremely loved-up and comfortable while knowing absolutely nothing about each other. Where would you like to go most in the world, she asked. Aw, definitely Dubai, he responded. Me too, she giggled excitedly, I’ve always wanted to go to Dubai. My friend and I found this hilarious. Over the course of the next fifteen minutes, the two were pleased to discover that their tastes overlapped in a variety of areas: their dream cars (Bugatti Veyron), their favorite pastimes (following NBA statistics), their opinions on New York (a little overrated). Around New Haven, they went quiet; a furtive glance revealed that they had descended into a peaceful half-sleep, her head resting lightly on his shoulder, apparently tired out by the heart-to-heart. All in a day’s work.
But see, there I go again. Who am I to judge, for God’s sake? It’s certainly not like I’ve never had a conversation in public that would make a slightly-too-eager listener cringe. Modern dating is difficult and often silly; at least they found each other, for the time being. So here’s to the era of no judgment. My cruelties are so shallow, anyway; perhaps they would be more acceptable, maybe even appreciated, if I were a bit more incisive, if I had something of value to say beyond self-conscious cynicism and garden-variety pretentiousness. Like I said, I’m fatigued.
I don’t judge when a man on the packed El train to City Hall presses up against my back in a way that feels excruciatingly intimate, though perhaps I should. I really can’t blame him — the entire trolley system is shut down for the week, directing all of its usual morning users, myself included, to this particular train. For all I know, that makes me the entitled intruder in his normally peaceful commute. Besides, we could all use a bit of intimacy. Trying times and everything.
Later that day I wander through a mostly-empty H&M, hunting for clothes to wear to an office internship downtown. What the fuck is business casual? I won’t find my answer here: the current offerings appear to be a healthy mix between knockoff Brandy Melville, wildly impractical party garb, and drab, shapeless blobs of inexplicably colored fabric seemingly manufactured for the sole purpose of filling in the gaps between pointelle florals and tangled sequin straps. For some reason everything is $17.99. I don’t even notice that I’m listening to a Christmas song until it’s about to end. It’s “Fairytale of New York,” by The Pogues — my all-time favorite. I listen to the song again in its entirety as I linger in front of the air conditioner, pretending to be transfixed by a tableau of lime green tube tops, wondering how long I could actually stand there before anyone would notice or say anything or care. I briefly consider attempting an endless stand in H&M as a sort of social experiment, don’t; instead, I buy a white fisherman’s sweater (in the tradition of Rory Gilmore, or maybe Chris Evans) from the sale rack. The cashier gives me what I perceive to be a quizzical look; I volunteer the explanation that sweaters like this are generally very expensive and hard to find once the weather gets cold. She doesn’t respond.
I keep seeing people I’d rather not: former friends, middle-aged teachers, strained acquaintances. I’m terrible at deciding whether to feign obliviousness or take the pained pleasantries standing up — I always end up caught in the middle, doomed to a fate of strange, too-far-away-at-that-point-to-start-a-conversation eye contact despite my very best efforts. A girl who decided to hate my guts last year pulls her boyfriend away from the back of the bus when she sees me sitting there; he trails behind, amicable and clueless, while I hide my smile and concentrate intensely on the billboard outside the window (“I’m Jawn Morgan” — an all-time low for pandering personal-injury-lawyer ads. Then again, it’s certainly made a splash). Sweating through my knee socks at a Wes-Anderson-themed house show, I run into a gangly, kind-eyed clarinet player who was a few grades above me at my high school. He asks what I’m doing these days; I pretend the vodka soda in my hand has miraculously acquired the potency of several shots of whiskey to get out of attempting an answer.
In other circumstances I’d find the string of coincidences somehow meaningful, or at the very least pleasant — serendipitous, maybe amusing. Not now. Not in this heat. It renders me inert, barely sentient; I feel like little more than a slowly melting, vaguely coherent blob of occasional desires and unpredictable urges, bumping around the steaming city. Everything inside me itches for fall, for rhythm, for stakes. I have this idea that intensity will ride in on the wings of September’s hallmark breeze, that when the blinding heat-haze finally fades I will be sharp and clear once again. Misguided, maybe, but I can’t seem to help it, nor can I really blame myself when everything is as slow, as stuck in molasses, as wistfully numb as it is these days. The weather might be an excuse for my sloth or lack of inspiration, but it’s a salient one. And it happens to be quite conveniently out of my control.
Oh, woe is me! What ever is a girl to do? I spend thirty minutes in H&M looking at yellow pleather bodysuits. It only feels appropriate.
Our retrospective nostalgia archetype darling-of-the-moment still seems to be the “2014 Tumblr Girl,” though it feels like she’s been fairly well battered and bruised by The Discourse at this point. Perhaps it’ll soon be time for the “2016 H&M Girl” to get her shining moment in the sun — all hail the return of Adidas Superstars and Kylie Lip Kits, Forever21 mirror selfies and American Eagle tie-dyes, Snapchat filters and Lush bath bombs and the brief but glorious heyday of Migos. Is this as nostalgic as I think it is? Or does everyone just harbor some inexplicable soft spot for the things they admired so voraciously in middle school? It certainly seems more difficult to romanticize than quirky party photos and pleated skirts. Then again, hindsight is 20/20. It’s a mystery of the Internet age, I think: how do we come to decide which memories deserve reminiscence? What to reflect on fondly and revive as chic, ironic cool-girl trends; what to deride, to cringe at and regret, to leave forgotten?
More reminiscence: I’m walking through the tiny University of the Sciences Campus, on an utterly mindless route I’ve taken at least a hundred times in the past few years. (Correction: it’s no longer USciences. The campus has been taken over by St. Joe’s University; another casualty of the trad-cath resurgence, no doubt.) It’s not a particularly pretty or particularly long or particularly interesting walk, which makes it, in many ways, perfect — it’s a blank canvas fit for any mood or purpose, bringing no outside baggage and imposing no creative direction, readily incorporated into whatever mental movie scene or music video I need at that moment. Today, though, I happen to be enjoying a rare moment of mental quiet until “Just Like Honey” by the The Jesus and Mary Chain comes on and I’m suddenly reminded of myself jogging this same route about a year ago, listening to the same song in the same scuffed earbuds. I used to run this way often, but I remember that day specifically, clearly — it was gray and drizzling and slightly cool, and I was a little bit melancholy for reasons I couldn’t put my finger on, attempting to lift my own spirits by congratulating myself for the athletic activity and declaring that I was going to start being “good,” running every day, upping my productivity, looking my best. And so on.
Today, I am not running. I’m walking slowly in torn-up Birkenstocks, purchased eons before I had even the faintest idea what The Jesus and Mary Chain was (probably after a quick stop at the Cherry Hill Mall H&M). It is not raining; but funnily enough, it just rained, maybe twenty minutes ago, so the backdrop of my walk is not gray-green and stormy and cool but instead dewy and quiet and dappled with wet sunlight. It’s humid but I don’t mind, which is rare. I feel closer to Earth than I did then. My mind is quieter and more peaceful, at least for today; tired, apparently, of agonizing over endless layers of perception and a body that I can’t seem to figure out how to see. Perhaps it’s just the eye of the hurricane, a break in the storm; perhaps I’ll be running frantically, obsessively again in the summer rain a year from now, listening to old playlists and drowning myself in pointless promises. But for now, it is hot and quiet, and everything that is not concrete and real feels silly in the light. The mental movie in my head has misplaced its audience; the critics are saying I’ve lost my touch. And the lead actress has broken through the screen, sweating like a maniac and squinting in the sunlight, learning for the first time — like an infant, like a child — that there are things here other than herself. So she takes a walk. And listens to a familiar song. And in the steaming heat, she prays for autumn and for clarity, for a chance to process, for a moment to breathe. She has only just begun.
“We know that in September, we will wander through the warm winds of summer’s wreckage. We will welcome summer’s ghost.”
Henry Rollins