july 2024
1
my favored month
in the glorious thick of summer. when it’s so hot that the evening cool air, if you’re lucky, feels delicious. my houseplants thrive, stretch out new stems, unfurl pale green leaves facing the sunlight. stone fruit, husked sweet corn, watermelon. listening to clairo's charm on the train.
2
when i come back around,
will i know what to say?
“CHIHIRO” is my favorite off billie eilish’s HIT ME HARD AND SOFT — the bass, the whispery echoes, the reverb, the floating sonic thrum, the gleaming landscape — i love how it just doesn’t feel like a typical song, not the same verse chorus verse chorus bridge, you’re washed underwater — i feel carried and aloft and swimming, her voice otherworldly talking singing yelling — when i saw spirited away for the first time in a theater years ago it was earth-shaking, the terror and wonder — how often does something resonate so soundly with your soul? that was like that and so is this. you know that feeling that something was made for you, that feels a piece of you, at once embedded and drawn to the surface, the radiant psychedelic soap bubble skin of the world — the shift between delicate vowels, the catch of consonants, the sibilance of poetry — running through the dark — ascension or descent? anyway i truly love her, this is her best album yet, i am enthralled, i am in her thrall.
3
enfleurage
i wasn't always into flowers, maybe because i am a california girl, but the midwest is filthy with them, and the summer storms are warm and crackling and torrential. i watched flowers bud and bloom and burst outside, peonies bent over with the weight of all their petals, magnolias and dogwoods incandescent in the sky. i brought home huge bouquets, learned to tend them in jars and vases, to cut the stalks at an angle, to strip thorns. i went to korea and discovered their fake flower markets; j helped me press thick bundles of them into our suitcases, soft fuzzy stems and sepals, dahlias, poppies, roses, ferns, craspedia. i watched videos of artists dyeing and cutting crepe paper, daubing the ridges with chalks and pan pastels. i tried to make my own, but it was unbelievably meticulous, if you've ever had a dying flower in your hands and leaked the confetti of petals and pollen all over the floor — imagine doing it backwards, taking a pair of scissors to reams of paper, gluing the tissue shards one by one, to nature's specifications, to complete the crown of filaments on the carpels, to wind green floral tape around floral wire.
somewhere i decided that coral charm peonies are my favorite, even though they smell like death; their tight buds give way to massive cupped petals (that's what she said) that shift from a magenta red to ombre blush pink to a yellow cream to white, until they trail petals, shed pistils. i also love tulips, maybe because of animal crossing; tulips are heliotropic, lean and twist toward the sunlight, will continue to grow in water after they're cut, until they sway over.
somewhere i decided if i ever got a tattoo, it would be of flowers. and it would have to be by gong greem.
last month, this finally happened.
4
miso island
miso is a summer girl and loves sunning on our deck, or lying in the tall grass like a studio ghibli film, surrounded by little dandelions and clover, or disappearing into the undergrowth next to the fence.
j keeps a ramekin of stale cheese puffs upstairs to entice miso to come upstairs for when we are actually upstairs. we're never really there in the summer, because it gets too hot, but sometimes we have to get something from there, so miso dashes up the stairs immediately when we open the door. j calls this "double jeopardy," where he treats her for going upstairs then has to treat her to go downstairs so he can close the door and seal off the cold air. my new strategy is to pluck a cheese puff from the upstairs once i've finished my errand and to wave it in front of miso as i climb downstairs, ultimately dropping it into her food bowl which makes a very distinct sound, though also, why not, we all need a double treat sometimes.
i got a new rug for miso that is a simulacrum of our dandelion-rich backyard, with flowers and grass, that i originally got for my desk chair then decided it was cuter for miso to lay on. j calls it "miso island."
5
pokémon trainer
sometimes j calls me a pokémon trainer, or going to pokémon camp, something about the sporty tech fabrics and athleisure and various baggu fanny packs and sandals and sneakers and baseball caps, which i ... am.
i also realized this year that i seem to wear exclusively blue and white during the summer.
this is quintessential j
6
"it's too hot to be creative"
j said this while we were both sweating through one of the hottest days of the year
7
mise en place
last year it felt like i went through a summer renaissance
of filling sketchbooks and painting en plein air.
this year, i haven't drawn very much. not sure if it's the
heatwaves, or that we no longer have
summer fridays together, or that
i spend so much more time in the kitchen singing
if a chiffonade can be a love song
.
lately i have realized how much i love climbing the skill tree in the kitchen, in my small way. i'm not interested in making consommé but i am in the tamar adler school of things. ripe fruit can be sliced and fanned out on a plate and sprinkled with a bit of salt. can be blended with ice and tequila and lime juice and simple syrup to alchemize into a frozen margarita. citrus rind can be zested, curled. garlic isn't just minced but crushed or sliced into chips or air fried in foil to a molten umami jam. sometimes i forget what things can be done, but the re-discovery is still a pleasure.
8
birthday camping
years ago we were looking around in REI and j suddenly declared, "i'm putting my foot down. we will NOT become camping people."
last weekend, we did, just barely, camp at a very fancy campground where the gear was provided to us and we borrowed sleeping bags from our friends. it was very fun and food does taste different al fresco, grilled over woodsmoke, snacking and eating and chatting all day.
on the way there we picked up banchan and various foodstuffs at h mart. it seemed fitting to get some gimbap on my birthday and we ate on the sidewalk, j pouring soy sauce into the plastic lid of his sashimi container (until it flew away and almost got lost in the breeze).
9
p.s.
miso says free palestine