. My friend Jayne has been making me summer playlists since way back when, as in, way back when making a summer playlist meant burning a cd that you then physically put in the mail. (After my sad requests, she has been making more playlists: Bittersweet Orange and Shibuya Beach are on Spotify.)
Jayne always knew way more J-Pop than I ever did and she got me into Coconuts Musume, which was a Hello! Project group that did not achieve quite the popularity of, say, Morning Musume. I really do not know all that much about them. However, I finally hunted down an mp3 of my favorite single of theirs, 'Halation Summer'. I can't get the video to embed (I can't even get the website to give me a link), but here's a cover by more recent (? I have no idea) group Berryz Koubou:
Anyway, for me it is not summer without Halation Summer. I know it's not summer, but it's about to be summer in Australia.
Usually I have a lot of sadness during winter and it's hard for me to find the invincible summer within. I feel like at this point I'm doing it out of spite. A dogged resistance to the leaves turning and falling, a boycott of lowered temperatures, summer playlists on repeat, the heat in the apartment turned way up. It is not only my hope that this will be my final winter; it's my hope that I won't even have to endure the whole of it. I'm always thinking of that saying Persians have for 13bedar:
Sal-I digar, Khane-I showhar, bachcheh dar baghal
(Let next year find me in my husband’s house with a baby in my arms)
But more like, let next year find me swimming in the ocean and soaking up the sun and breathing the wild air. And looking at feral iguanas. But I don't know how to say that in Persian, much less make it rhyme.
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There might be more to this weekly roundup if Saturday night hadn't wiped me out. I made dinner and after that I was completely finished. I must've slept for over ten hours, but I didn't really sleep well the night before. The cartoon on grid paper is one that I did on the bus to and from a job interview that I declined, but they're still emailing and calling me as though I were coming in tomorrow. The crying face was doodled while I was telling a story during the museum walk zoom today. This piece above is currently untitled and I finished it before I went on vacation. I bought fancy Sequential Art Bristol so this took a long while as I actually used rulers and did a pencil laydown before. (It caused me to lie down a lot. Lying down is part of the process.) I am very happy with how it came out. Today on the museum walk we went to the Belvedere Museum in Vienna and looked at all the Klimt. We had a small turnout today, but still had some good discussions; what I thought about most was how artists like Klimt and Munch are considered "fine art", but I don't know that their works would be considered "fine art" if they were contemporary; I think they would be classified as "lowbrow" or "illustrative" (or that most damning of adjectives, "decorative"). I know this is something that is constantly being asked, but I was there looking at this little satisfying crying face doodle and thinking, "why isn't it art?" Today at the zoom museum walk we also discussed variations on stuffed pumpkins as Dr. Cath was making what I believe is Ruth Reichl's stuffed pumpkin recipe, which I had been made aware of when I had sent my BFF Kate this Ghapama recipe. Dr. Cath is cooking Thanksgiving dinner this year, which she is fine with but feels stifled about because she can't do anything truly interesting like make a garam masala turkey. I think she was just shooting off an example, but now I'm obsessed with a garam masala Thanksgiving turkey. Can you make a stuffing out of naan? I would also have some curry mashed potatoes.
when you get the aliexpress ruby slippers I have been in a Bad Mood today, which I think is a combination of homesickness, unaddressed anger from last month, and PMS. Not sure about the last one. I had to basically drag myself to the desk to do this little Dorothy doodle. I did make some little comics on my trip, though! I did work in my sketchbook! I started it this year and I would like to finish it this year as well, though I don't know how likely that is to happen. The weather here is getting colder; last night there was a threat of snow flurries. When I left, the leaves were still mostly green, but now they're in their full autumn glory, I guess. Forty degrees is winter in Florida, so I never could really associate a temperature under fifty to "autumn". My mother bought me David Sedaris' A Carnival of Snackery: Diaries 2003-2020 for my birthday. I really loved Theft By Finding: Diaries 1977-2002, and this one is also so fun. I have been taking pictures and sending them to friends. (My brother was actually fooled by the joke of Amy being in Playboy - I think I severely disappointed him.)
Usually I'm already in Christmas mode by mid-October, but homesickness has overridden my abundant holiday cheer and now all I do is listen to The Beach Boys, look at pictures of the ocean, and glare into space. I should probably channel this anger into something more productive, but in my defense I did clean the bathtub today. My month absolutely sucked and thankfully for my birthday Daryl Surat flew me down to Florida so I could drop myself into the Atlantic Ocean for the first time in FIVE YEARS. ("Vitamin D is very important," said my mother, and I haven't decided yet if this was an innuendo on her part.) Now I am so homesick that I am ready to claw my own eyes out. I came back to Kentucky and it is forty degrees outside and I have had Enuf. I have been out in the world pretending that I like weather other than Hot and I do not. I am 900% done with fall and also winter and I am ready to GO BACK TO MY HOME STATE AND LOOK AT FERAL IGUANAS. The worst part of this whole homesickness was that when I had to move from Maryland I just wanted to go back to Florida but there was really no way to do that. It was easier to head back to Lexington, but now I am here alone in my apartment listening to the Beach Boys and alternating between immense hope for the future and extreme pessimism. Politically, Florida has been despicable, but I love every corny tacky tourist thing about Florida and I want it all to be injected directly into my veins. I want to go home yesterday and live in a colorful house in a colorful neighborhood and look at pelicans and swim in the ocean and feel the full power of Earth's yellow sun. Right now I am trying to figure out how to undertake Operation: Homeward Bound The Incredible Journey II: Electric Boogaloo. Wish me luck. I am tired of wandering the world like a fortune teller and I am ready to plant myself in the sand, sooner rather than later. While I was in Florida, Daryl Surat and I played Super Mario Brothers 3, which is maybe a tradition at this point. It's on Twitch and you can watch it here!
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AuthorArtist, essayist, divinity school dropout. Here for a good time, not for a long time. Archives
February 2024
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