“In these rooms, the world’s vast hissing tangle of shadows burns away, all its treacherous grays are honed to the stark purity of a bare blade, two-edged: cause and effect, good and evil. To me, these rooms are beautiful. I go into them the way a boxer goes into a ring: intent, invincible, home.”
–Tana French, Broken Harbor”
I know that my last post was talking about how excited I was for the official start of summer, but, like last year, I seem to be developing a pattern in August of wanting the summer to end. The beach doesn’t feel quite as nice as it did in the beginning, and I am sick of the humidity and the heat (more so the humidity). After another one of our girls’ nights out, I was on the couch with Z watching the weather yesterday morning, and when the weatherman mentioned a cold front coming in overnight, a smile was brought to my face only to be washed away seconds later when the 5-day forecast was shown and the temperatures did not look to resemble anything of the sorts. It was responsible for the storms of last night, but that was pretty much it. We had been trying to decide if, despite the cloud coverage, it would be a good idea to lay out on the roof top and catch some sun; both of us had laid out the day before (me at the beach and Z on the roof), but we were a little sluggish when coming to a decision. I’m not sure if it was the slight hangover that we both had, or the fact that when we did eventually decide to “try it” and walk outside, the humid heat hit us like a wall that just made me want to run back indoors and hide. I wasn’t’ the only one thinking that apparently, because, after stopping at Dunkin’ Donuts and getting iced caramel lattes, we stepped out onto the roof to find absolutely no one up there. I snapped a couple pictures of the incredible view, and we retreated back to Z’s apartment.
Not too long after, I decided to embark on my travels home. Despite my better judgment, I decided to walk the sixteen blocks from Z’s place to the subway so that I would take one less train; by the time I was on the platform waiting for the 7, my face was literally soaked. Normally this walk does not produce such results; I blame it on the humidity. When I finally got home, I spent the rest of the day indoors, watching tv and lounging on the couch.
So, the question is: why am I over the summer? I’ve always gotten over the winter really quickly, but I’ve never been a fan of the cold…so, why summer? Honestly, I am really not sure, but I do not want to continue this line of thinking into anymore consecutive Augusts. Action must be taken. From this moment, every time I have an inkling of a negative thought towards summer, I will immediately dismiss it and replace it with something positive. For example, this evening, instead of deciding on a somewhere to have dinner, my bf and I will wander around the West Village for a bit and stumble onto a place. Although the weather is hot, there is something to be said about just walking around the city in the summer: you never know what you’re going to see or where you’re going to end up. Huge bonus: the humidity is supposed to leave this evening and the temperature is supposed to go down to something like 69. Crossing my fingers that it happens and I can finally open up my windows which have been shut since Friday morning when the humidity started settling in.
“Somewhere far inside my spine and deep in the palms of my hands, something hummed; like a sound too low to hear, like a warning, like a cello string when a tuning fork strikes the perfect tone to call it awake.”
–Tana French, Broken Harbor
“The arrow has to draw back to fly ahead.”
–Proverb
“Words – so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.”
–Nathaniel Hawthorne
“Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to be always part of unanimity.”
–Christopher Morely
Last week, summer came in with a bang, literally. Temperatures were well into the 90s and felt anywhere from 100 to 110: well above the normal for this time of year (hmmm, perhaps I should be a meteorologist). Then, there were the rainstorms of Friday, which personally, I’m thankful for…and I didn’t get wet at all unless you count the back of my legs as I purposefully stood partially outside the door of my Laundromat, feeling in disbelief, the sudden coolness of the air. In degrees, it only dropped about fifteen, but it felt as if it had dropped twenty-five instantaneously. I’ve never seen temperatures drop so quickly.
To celebrate the beginning of summer, I took a much needed day off on Friday and frolicked to the beach with an old friend. I left my house at the same time that I normally would for work, but instead of the lull of my usual bus/subway commute, I was breezing in the opposite direction with the windows rolled down and my friend behind the steering wheel.
We arrived just before 8:30 to a beach I hadn’t been to in years and, aside from the guy who was driving around checking the lifeguard towers, we were the only souls who had dared to step foot on the shore: the sky had been cloudy (I’d decided to chance it) and it was rather early to hit the beach unless one was staying somewhere in the Hamptons or Fire Island, where you could stumble out of bed and directly onto the beach. After the routine of setting ourselves up, I walked to the shoreline and let the froth of the waves encompass my feet as I gazed out at the vast ocean before me and breathed in the beachy air. The clouds from the morning had burned off and I was left with sun, sand and ocean. More often than not, I take myself on a date to the beach; I joke that it is my therapy, but it really is. I could be surrounded by people and yet the beach feels like it is there just for me. I lay there for hours in my own savasana, and absorb the whole of it all.
It was a beautiful, sun-filled day, until right around 12:30, when the sky became covered with clouds. Having the knowledge that it was supposed to storm, my friend and I slowly packed up our things and left. It wasn’t until we were five minutes from home that the first downpour of the evening occurred: it was short-lived. The second downpour (the one that drastically dropped the temperature) occurred after I had gotten to the laundromat and lasted well over a half hour. My friend who owns the laundromat and I stood at the door (I stood just outside it) amazed at the speed and heaviness of the rain. I stuck my arms out and felt the coolness of the rain falling on my skin. I even attempted to capture the beauty of it on my phone, but sadly, rain does not photograph well.
After taking a shower, I settled onto my couch with a glass of wine and went to bed early. Another good thing about spending the day at the beach is that I never have trouble sleeping that night :).
Daydreaming about yesterday
Looking to the past
with the knowledge of the present.
Times that were forgotten
People that were lost
Sacrifices that were made
in order to compensate
for the changing world.
Moments that were shared
Fantasies that are long gone
Familiar voices that remain unheard:
silent words unuttered.
Problems that seemed as if
they would never go away.
Precious gifts, still kept safe
tucked away in some special place.
Board games, once used non-stop
now decorated with dust.
Photographs that still remain
shadowing the past.
Unopened letters strewn about
carelessly forgotten.
Memories of once existing places
are non-existent: replaced.
“On the mountains of truth you can never climb in vain: either you will reach a point higher up today, or you will be training your powers so that you will be able to climb higher tomorrow.”
–Friedrich Nietzsche
I believe that one of my very first posts was about my frustration with the fact that I could not fall asleep. Now, I have had many a bad night since then, but last night rings out as especially awful. Usually, during those dreaded nights, a huge issue is that I cannot stop stressing and/or thinking about things that are going on in my life at the moment. This happens to a lot of people I’m sure, however, there comes a point when you should be able to turn your brain off and say goodnight, especially, one would think, after gyming during the day and then yoga-ing at night; well, as it turns out, one would be wrong because that is exactly what I did…and for the life of me, I could not fall asleep. I actually ventured out of bed and onto my couch with the television turned on; I never do that…clearly, my mind was looking for a distraction.
In the June 2012 edition of Vogue, there was an article that brought to light a recent study on the dangers of sleeping pills and how, they only help you to fall asleep an approximate of twelve minutes faster than if you were to not take them and fall asleep naturally (this, of course, is not one of the so-called dangers, but those still need more testing, so I don’t want to delve into them at the moment). I laughed at this because; sometimes it can take me hours to fall asleep…although this generally occurs in either one of two situations: one, if I am sleeping at a place that is not my own (this has always been an issue for me since I can remember), or two, if I go to sleep before my body is ready to just pass out. The latter occurs frequently during the work week, when I have to force myself to go to bed due to the fact that I have to be up at a certain time. There was also an inset within the article, naming foods to avoid before going to bed (and foods that are a go: yogurt and light grains to name a few). Among the top three to be avoided were: foods that are high in sodium, foods that are high in sugar and foods that have a high acidity level. The sodium and the sugar affect your blood pressure, which makes your heart beat faster. I definitely have experienced lying down to go to sleep and feeling my heart pounding. Of course I then get nervous about it and start to worry, which makes the pounding worse. The foods with high acidity can cause indigestion, which can also keep you awake. There were a few other things on the list, but pretty much, it is better to not eat anything directly before going to bed. Also, the article discussed caffeine and its half-life, which is the amount of time for half of it to leave your body and, I have to tell you, I was surprised with that one. I didn’t have any idea that caffeine stayed with you for so long. For example, the article stated that the half-life of caffeine for a person in their early twenties is four hours: meaning it takes around eight hours for it to completely leave. And that is just for a person in their early twenties.
Now, I do agree that food and caffeine can play a part in keeping a person awake at night, and that most certainly has applied to me, but they are not my frontrunners. For me, the two main reasons that keep me from sleeping at night are: comfort level (familiarity with a place and its surroundings; i.e. if there are people, how well I know the people, etc) and stress (or rather, as I like to call it, over-thinking).
A bunch of factors come into play when dealing with comfort level. Now, before I go into that, let me just go on a limb and say that there are only two places where I feel completely comfortable and can get a good nights’ sleep: my own apartment and my second home in Huntington. Of course, that does not mean that I always have great nights’ sleep in these places; exhibit A: last night. When I spend a night anywhere besides at these two, chances are that I will spend a majority of the night tossing and turning while whoever else is with me will be content with slumber. Okay, now that I think about it, maybe there aren’t that many factors after all, but there are a few. Familiarity with a specific place: The more times and frequency of my spending a night at a place aides in my eventually sleeping better there. If I do not feel at all connected with/to a place, I will not be comfortable enough to fall asleep there. Familiarity with a person: Generally, if I am not sleeping at my place it is because I am visiting a friend, family member, or staying over with someone that I am dating. In regard to any of those, my being able to sleep depends on how comfortable I feel with that person, how close, how many times I’ve had sleepovers with that person, etc. There are definitely other factors that play into comfort, but those are my two big ones.
Now…as for stress playing a factor; I am always stressing about something. Whether it be minor or major, it doesn’t really matter. What I need to do is learn how to control my mind so that I can shut it off. So far…my mind wins every time.
elizabethsara 