#103: Season of envy
Good morning!
The mood in New York right now is joy shot through with anxiety. Everyone out, long lines, texts about what to do. I’d say it’s covid-related, but I think it’s more of an evergreen June thing.
Summer unofficially began for me when I stopped consulting the weather app before going out. So, about 10 days ago. I’ve been surprised by rain twice now—on my way home from my office, outside the grocery store—but only in a way that felt charming, which is how I know it’s still early. New York City hasn’t had a high below 70 in more than two weeks. A single layer of clothing is the uniform. This is an important aspect of the season—the lack of preparation required. The thin divide between yourself and several possibilities.
I think about that constantly in the final stretch of winter, when the warmth of the holidays has evaporated and my choices contract to reaching distance. All I want then is possibility, open doors, the freedom to follow whims without too much thought. In February, when that sentiment peaks, I fixate on a particular summer mood: I’m in the city, I’ve just bought an iced coffee, and I discover via text that my brother is nearby. We meet up and hug in the middle of the sizzling street, sunglasses perched on our noses, several ideas between us about where to go next. This happened once when I was new to the city and it became forever stamped in my mind as New York summer incarnate. When my fingers are numb on the frozen train platform, I imagine that’s all that summer is.
I forget it comes with its own challenges. Or I don’t, but I promise it will be different this year—that I’ll appreciate every second of it—and then the proverbial sore throat goes away and I’m not nearly as grateful as I promised I’d be. I’m trying to think of summer differently this year. Because there’s more to it than strawberries and tank tops and the possibility of sitting on a roof (almost as valuable as the act itself). It’s also about facing myself. Unlike winter, when I can blame everything on the elements, summer inverts those conditions, leaving me with nobody to blame but myself. The enemy comes indoors.
I’m reminded of this every Sunday in the summer, when the main drag near my apartment is transformed into an open street market. On every block, there are bands and DJs and saxophone players plugged into industrial-sized speakers, sweaty dads in t-shirts turning meat over on grills, neighbors selling second-hand dresses and handmade earrings. One family sets up on their front stoop and sells cocktails poured into freshly carved-out pineapples. Friends sit around patio tables for hours, watching people walk by drunk or dancing with a kid on their shoulders. The sound of this street fair is pure, uncut joy. And I know that because, most weeks, I can hear it all perfectly from my living room.
Sometimes I go out and walk around, but not for long. I tend to reserve Sundays for laying low. Just in the usual way. I take care of my apartment and myself, work on art, read a book, take a long shower at 5 p.m., order in, etc. It’s not a rule exactly, but whenever I write over it with other plans, I miss it. The street fair changes things though; hearing it while prostrate on my couch always makes me feel like I’m turning down the sweetest summer invitation of my life. Even if I’ve spent the prior week out and about, enjoying New York, I still feel a little wrong, as if by resting I’ve given up. Maybe this is just the curse of living in a lively place, where something fun is always happening somewhere, but I couldn’t have written a better metaphor for summer ennui myself.
Where I grew up in California, we didn’t anticipate the seasons the way other places do: counting down the days, marking various turns in their lives around what the trees looked like. I liked that about New York when I got here. And as time’s passed I’ve become more interested in what the changing of the seasons might represent beyond the aesthetic baton-pass: boots for sandals, dinner parties for picnics, chills for sweat. There’s the cliché that summer is for turning outward and winter for turning inward. But I think it’s possible to get more specific than that: to proclaim summer, in this case, the season of envy.
It’s also the season of other worthwhile sins like sloth, lust, and pride, but I don’t think we give enough credence to the quiet anxiety that underpins all of it: the eagerness to make the most of a sunny day that also feels a little bit like fear. I may be talking about a sentiment specific to a certain city-dwelling set, but I think it’s a natural response, seeing as summer starts running out as soon as it begins. The party outside my apartment every Sunday has arrived like a challenge. An opportunity, maybe, to learn how to be more self-guided: to join the party when I want to, and refuse to feel guilty when I don’t. It seems like a good life skill, generally speaking, to learn to want different things than everyone else. To not perceive the joy of other people as a kind of accusation.
Recently, my happily married friend told me she sometimes fantasizes about being married to someone else, just for the sake of dealing with new problems. And I get what she means. Old problems can be so depressing. I think this is one of the hidden charms of seasonal change: new challenges, new neuroses to face down. It’s not necessarily the reason summer makes me giddy, but after a couple weird years, I’m trying to appreciate it for all its composite parts.
My favorite article I read this week was “A Catastrophic Loss of Faith in America,” an interview with Pankaj Mishra for The Drift about the global state of politics right now. Last week’s 15 things also included some good media gossip, my new favorite shirt, the perfect summer cocktail, a couple really great essays, and more. I’ll see some of you on Tuesday for my next podcast, it’s about an unlikely sign of confidence.
Hope you have a nice Sunday!
Haley