The thing about a perfect summer song is that it needs to be buoyant and life-affirming but also have woven into it a thin, gossamer thread of sorrow, because this is also what makes summer so wonderful (and the bowl of cherries transcendent). It’s the knowledge that it will all soon enough be over.

— Yasi Salek

companion soundtrack for this issue

• Variations on a Theme: A summer mixtape from 19-year old me (August 2003)

• “The Middle” and the rest of Bleed American by Jimmy Eat World (June 2001)

it just takes some time

A hazard of middle age no one warned me about: that a pile of mulch could cause so much existential joy and dread.

The mulch arrived at my home with the reliable spell of my credit card and an online form. A few days later, a parcel of fancy dirt-topper was forklifted onto our driveway. It was big. Big as in BigYellowBag® dot com, but also big as in BIG: a cubic yard of mulch weighs roughly 800 pounds.

Standing in my driveway on that breezy early August afternoon, two competing feelings rose up in me. First, the joy of total satisfaction over this purchase. For a few seconds, I felt like the richest person alive. It’s hard to describe the thrill of summoning a half-ton of brown organic matter to your house if you haven’t personally experienced it, but trust me when I tell you that this was a genuine highlight of my summer.

And then, shortly after, the unsettling reminder: one day I will no longer be alive to experience such singular joys.

This reaction was disproportionate to the moment, but the mulch’s arrival did signal a solemn countdown of sorts. Throughout August, one painstaking wheelbarrow load at a time, my once mighty pile of stank steadily shrank. By Labor Day, a flattened polyethylene husk was all that remained of its former grandeur.

In other words: Summer is now officially over.

By most measures, I had a pretty good one. In June, there was a pleasant trip downstate to accompany an old college friend to see Jimmy Eat World on their Bleed American 25th Anniversary Tour. In July, I had a pleasantly low-key birthday and joined some friends for a weekly(ish) ritual of eating pasta and watching The Sopranos. I welcomed the arrival of Leo season with the revival of a couple long-stalled side projects, falling into a rare but satisfying stretch of creative momentum that lasted through most of August. And yet, every moment of sunshine cast its familiar shadow of grief as I watched the summer slip away.

little girl, you’re in the middle of the ride

The summer got off to a strong start. After a busy season of work, I took a much-needed week off to visit my old college friend H, his wife, and their daughter. We first met up for a weekend at their friend’s beautiful old farmhouse nestled between the Catskill and Pocono Mountains, then headed to their home in Brooklyn for a few days.

It was a perfect weekend of delicious home-cooked meals, tasty wine, pool lounging, a seemingly endless flight of wood-fired pizzas, and watching the Knicks win the NBA championship with some very happy New Yorkers. And, of course, getting to enjoy it all with one of my oldest and dearest friends. We did the math and realized it had been 7 years (too long!) since we’d last seen each other in person.

Revisiting music from your formative years is its own kind of time travel. The seed for this trip was originally planted in February, when H texted me the announcement of Jimmy Eat World’s tour celebrating the 25th anniversary of their album Bleed American. More uncomfortable math creeps up: 2001 really was twenty-five years ago, wasn’t it.

“The Middle” isn’t my favorite Jimmy Eat World song, but Bleed American still holds a place of reverence in my teenage heart that made it satisfying to hear live. The song certainly lands differently now than when I was 17. From my now 42-year-old vantage point, it’s hard not to hear you’re in middle of the ride as anything but you’re in the middle of your life.

“Middle age” is really the best-case scenario framing for being in your forties. Part of me is amazed I’ve managed to make it this far. But I also like working backwards from a deadline. So not knowing whether my ultimate expiration date is 60 seconds or 60 years from now is a unique torment for my anxious brain.

Back in Buffalo at a poetry reading in late June, one of the youngest performers of the evening recites a line referencing the dash on a tombstone between birth and death. She poses a question to the audience: What are you gonna do with your dash?

don’t write yourself off yet

In her essay “On Keeping a Notebook,” Joan Didion meditates on her lifelong habit of journaling (though she doesn’t call it that). She describes chronic notetakers like herself as “a different breed altogether … children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss.”

As you may know, dear reader of these sprawling personal essays I write “for fun,” I am one of these maladapted children. I’ve kept some form of a journal on and off (but mostly on) since I was 12 years old.

My notebooks, whether paper or digital, have always been a refuge—a safe space to let my inner life unfurl. The value of this has always been as a kind of therapy, more useful in the moment for sorting my feelings out than as a historical ledger of the whats/wheres/whens/whos of my life. But ultimately they end up being a hybrid of the two.

Why I continue to hang onto this ever-growing archive of notebooks is more of a mystery. They have lived within arm’s reach of me in every place I’ve called home, surviving multiple Marie Kondo-fueled purges and cross-country moves. I rarely look at them, but I can’t let them go—even the volumes that make me cringe to re-read (which is most of them).

I guess there’s a comfort in knowing they’re always there to return to. I agree with Didion’s sentiment about the importance of reconnecting with one’s past selves:

“I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not … We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. We forget the loves and the betrayals alike, forget what we whispered and what we screamed, forget who we were. … It is a good idea, then, to keep in touch, and I suppose that keeping in touch is what notebooks are all about.”

After the visit with H and our shared emo kid nostalgia trip, I felt the urge to get back in touch with the teenage version of myself who first fell in love with those songs—to “remember what it was to be me”—with more clarity (and “Clarity”). This sent me on a journey back to the summer between my freshman and sophomore year of college.

try everything you can

One of my core teenage hobbies was making mixtapes. Among my old diaries was a musical goldmine: a purple spiral-bound notebook filled with track lists of every mix I made during my high school and college years. Among them I found the tracklist for a summer-themed mixtape I made in August 2003—per my liner notes at the time, “with no one in mind.” An attempt to capture my favorite season: “the feeling of summer and what it means to me.”

I still love many of these songs; others I had completely forgotten. I was delighted to see both The Get Up Kids and Jimmy Eat World (the former of which opened for the latter at the concert in June) hanging out together on Side A. Other selections are odd companions, but I can trace each to someone or something in my then sphere of influence—my then-boyfriend, my cool older sister, a few Canadian strays from living in the broadcast range of Toronto’s premiere alt-rock station (102.1—THE EDGE).

One outlier from the 70s is there purely because of its presence in Bottle Rocket, Wes Anderson’s debut film about a clumsy gang of aspiring thieves that I was obsessed with that summer.

In the first few minutes of the film, Dignan (played by Owen Wilson) hands his friend Anthony (Owen’s IRL brother, Luke Wilson) a red spiral-bound notebook with the multi-decade plan he’s hatched for their criminal career—organized into time frames from “Initial Five Years” to “The Next Fifty.” (Goals for the last section, “Living Into 21st. Century” are simply: “1. Remain flexible. 2. Don’t be too derogatory.”)

Dignan’s plans quickly go sideways, and a botched after-hours bookstore robbery leads to various misadventures on the lam from “Johnny Law” (“Ain’t no trip to Cleveland!”).

Criminal aspirations aside, it’s hard not to relate to this character as we watch the grandness of his ambitions comically and tragically eclipse his capacity to realize them.

During the recent search through my personal archives, I found something of a long-term vision for my own life trajectory in a text file titled “021206.rtf”. My own list lacks the rigor and pomp of Dignan’s but has all the same naive sincerity, starting with the preface: “It's a list. Characteristics of the person I forever strive to be.”

Draws cool little comics.
Takes lots of good photos.
Plays instruments, writes and records music.
Crafty and creative and always making.
Reads comic books and good literature.
Knows a few languages well.
Can hold her own in chess.
Listens to NPR.
Has a dedicated fan base. A pal to everyone.
Surrounded by friends that are hilarious and insightful.
Stylish but thrifty.
Goes for long walks.
Adventurous and willing to try new things.
Makes cool websites for money.
Works in a library or museum and likes her job.

20 years later, a few items remain aspirational. The most action my musical instruments get nowadays is when our dog Lucy’s tail grazes the strings of a baritone ukulele hanging near my desk, strumming a joyful open chord with each wag: Em7, Em7, Em7, Em7.

But for the most part I’ve done all right. The life I’d envisioned one half of my life ago is pretty close to the one I find myself happily waking up to each morning. I tend to my creative projects from a desk that sits beneath a rainbow of yarn and art supplies. I go for my little walks (usually prompted by Lucy). I work at my job that somehow combines “Makes cool websites for money” and “Works [with] a library or museum” into one harmonious dream role. I text my hilarious and insightful friends, many of whom knew me before I found myself here. I jot it down in my little notebooks. I like my little life.

live right now

As beautiful as the trip downstate was, I had to brace myself for the reality that it would likely be my last time seeing Buddy, H’s animal companion I’d formed a long distance bond with over a decade of Brooklyn visits and dog sitting stints.

He was getting older, and in April the concerning health updates arrived: a biopsy, a nasal carcinoma too advanced to operate on, palliative care buying maybe 6-9 more months. He hasn’t left yet, H wrote in one message. So just gonna enjoy his presence while we can.

Later, as the plans for our dreamy poolside farmhouse weekend came together, the trip’s main purpose was framed by H as giving Buddy his probably last pool dip before he heads to the big pool in the sky.

A Brooklyn transplant but a Florida native at heart, Buddy’s natural habitat has always been on the hot cement beside a shimmering blue swimming pool. Even with his health in decline, flashes of his more lively self appeared that weekend—making proud victory laps around the pool for another sprint through the cool mist of a garden hose.

Our little Buddy was gone just a few weeks later. A few days before my birthday, I received the news about his final pizza party and peaceful passing at home. I replied with my condolences and something about how grief is really a form of gratitude. A paraphrasing of something I’d heard recently at the poetry reading, suddenly less abstract than when I’d first heard it two weeks before.

everything, everything will be just fine

My summer ended about as perfectly as it began: another relaxing road trip into the Catskills, and further east for a tour up and down the bougie-quaint towns of Hudson Valley.

Seasonal transitions aren’t always the most punctual here, so we felt blessed that our trip landed in the perfect intersection between summer and autumn. Sunny enough for a hike in short sleeves, but breezy enough to not regret layering tights under my shorts. Leaves still hanging on, with a few eager trees starting to change into their warmer-hued fall wardrobe. Waking to coffee and a chilly 40ºF morning in the mountains, followed by a much warmer day ending at a cute roadside stand for ice cream (which was also our dinner).

Our trip concluded at PLANTASIA, a niche ambient music festival on a small farm near Kingston, NY (with a vibe that was more “chill picnic with occasional live music” than “music festival” in the classic sense). The event was a loose celebration of the 50th anniversary of Mother Earth’s Plantasia, a soothing electronic album that synth pioneer Mort Garson created “for plants... And the people who love them” and is probably my favorite album of 2026 (calling it already and will have more to say in a future issue :).

everything, everything will be all right

My mind keeps returning to that line from the poetry reading in June—the idea of grief as a form of gratitude. To grieve a thing we’ve lost is to be grateful we ever experienced something so wonderful in the first place. It feels like the theme of this summer—or maybe all of the summers, really.

Anyway, the mulch. I spread its final pungent dregs on my garden beds over Labor Day weekend. The scattered ashes of another summer over too quickly. ✦