love letter to july + a simple practice in grounding & presence

written by sophie klemond

i love summer. i warmly endow it with the title of my favorite season. i live by the ocean, and i was born at the beginning of july, the month where summer really gets its footing and starts spreading its wings. june is tentative, nervous to burn too hot too soon and intrude on spring. but july is blunt and brazen, its hands sticky sweet with stray drips of ice cream and its mouth slick with the juice of ripe nectarines and watermelons, its feet dry and sandy and its shoulders singed peach pink. july asks no permission; it burns and hollers and outbursts in sparks. if i’m being honest i do consider july to be mine somehow (but i share).

in all of its brashness, it’s easy to overlook july’s soft side. at dusk things turn purple-tinted and you can step out barefoot on the sidewalk in a t-shirt, the heat burned off but the air still thick with the same echoing warmth of the sheets where the person you love just laid a moment ago. the sun? she just stepped out but she’ll be back in the morning, the crescent moon promises you. you don’t need a sweater yet but you will come half an hour, once the warmth has dissipated. and even at midday there’s a tranquility in the peak of the temperature, the eye of the storm. a breeze will rustle and the leaves will stir and the shadows they cast on the ground will shift and you’ll be suddenly reminded that you were once seven. july loves to reminisce.

my love for summer is juxtaposed with my all-consuming aversion to boredom. i like plans and friends and preparation and chatter and an itinerary of stimulation. admittedly summer can provide these things, and yet there’s an inherent emptiness, sweet and beautiful as it is: a break from structure, the universe waving her hands at you and telling you to entertain yourself for a while. on these days of freedom and slowness, i often get restless. i want to rush through each movement to get to the next, even when i’m not sure what is next. what are people doing right now? what should i be doing? what is there to do?

last week i was having an evening like this, so i set out to answer these questions for myself. notebook, watercolors, and pen in my bag, i marched up the hill to the park in just my t-shirt (sweater clutched under my arm, knowing i’d need it come half an hour). i moved to a new neighborhood at the end of june, home to one of san diego’s most beloved parks with a sprawling grassy field overlooking the city. even on a tuesday, the lawn was amply speckled with picnic blankets and cookouts, dogs and lovers and families and acquaintances.

this is life, i thought, life is happening around me and this is it, and i love humans.

the hum of conversation punctuated with frequent stabs of laughter, the tangled mess of lives drawn to one space just to gather, to be. i laid on my stomach in the crisp grass for a while, drinking it in, then followed the urge to express it somehow on paper. when I returned home, i had two sheets:

one an abstract representation of the aura and energy of the park,

and the other a jumble of words, bits and pieces of conversation overheard, soundbites of lives i will never live or know.

if your mind is adrift, you’re struggling to focus, you can’t relax, and you need a reset, or if you’re just not sure what to do with yourself in the paradisiacal wasteland of summer, i offer you this practice. take a pad of paper and your art medium of choice (yes, the pen floating in your purse counts, but you might have more freedom with colors – this little watercolor palette has served me well for years) and go somewhere public where you can sit awhile. capture the aura of the space you’re in – how does it feel? what do you see, taste, hear, smell? is it tense, loose, relaxed, bustling, solemn? there are no wrong answers. abstract art can be forgiving and interpretive, making it an excellent place to begin if you don’t consider yourself creative (spoiler alert: you are). as you’re doing this, perhaps on another sheet or incorporated into your artwork if you like, write down what you hear. if people are talking, what do they have to say? get curious, eavesdrop, be discreetly nosy, absorb yourself in the exclamations, gripes, proclamations of love, worries and offhand comments of strangers. i enjoyed doing this outdoors, but you can try it anywhere. perhaps i’ll bring my notebook and pencils to the dmv this weekend and capture the excruciating monotony of collective waiting.

i love this exercise because it simultaneously brings solitude, peace, and connection. you become a field researcher, your subject a cross-section of life & humanity. it helped me slow down and embrace the meandering pace of a summer night where all there was to do, for me and for all of the park-goers, was be in the same place. i left the park last tuesday night feeling grounded and with a warm affection for people: our rituals, our idiosyncracies, our need to be with one another.

sincerely,

sophie estelle