making sh!t for your girlfriend since 2007

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soon come

Craft Mart ~ Nov 8 (6pm - 11pm) & Nov 9 (11am - 7pm) ~ Hamilton Artists Inc. ~ 155 James Street North, Hamilton
Halifax Crafters Society Winter Market ~ Nov 30 & Dec 1 ~ Olympic Community Centre ~2304 Hunter Street, Halifax
City of Craft ~ Dec 14 & 15 ~ The Theatre Centre ~ 1087 & 1095 Queen Street West, Toronto

Wednesday, September 4, 2013

It was only summer at night.

 
So there I am on the last hot day in August (there weren’t many), reading next to Grenadier Pond in High Park, thinking a lot about the summer that wasn’t, trying to accept that that day – the last afternoon off I would have in a while – I’d be solemnly sprinkling a fistful of dirt onto the season’s casket. The last few months simply had not been hot enough, sunny enough, the days – even after adjusting for daylight savings - somehow not long enough. The one thing I could admit though, was that for everything it lacked, the summer certainly made up for in some stellar sunsets and night skies, killer dusks and golden hours, bulbous glowing moons ready to crush us whole. Maybe it was just all y’alls Instagrams, but those summer nights – resentfully cardigan-clad  – were absurdly beautiful.
It’s a small consolation for everything that didn’t happen this summer. The projects that didn’t get finished. The friends that never got hung out with. The people that never got met. The dress that never got worn. That beach/park/patio with the twinkly lights you didn’t spend enough time in. That album you didn’t listen to. That song you didn’t dance to. That ONE hot night you should’ve gone out, and stayed out, but didn’t. The superhero costume you were gonna make for your nephew’s fourth birthday. The health problems that never got sorted.That flight you didn't book. That recipe with the figs and the cheese. The road trip to Detroit. The books you didn’t read. Oh god, don’t even think about the books.
Which is what brought me to the park that late afternoon in the first place – an opportunity to continue reading Rebecca Solnit’s The Faraway Nearby which I had started two months before. And because the Universe is the way it is, and because Rebecca Solnit is, quite frankly, The Shit, I came across this passage – where she writes about making apricot preserves - just as I was in the thick of this sappy wistfulness:
 I wish that I could put up yesterday’s evening sky for all posterity, could preserve a night of love, the sound of a mountain stream, a realization as it sets my mind afire, a dance, a day of harmony, ten thousand glorious days of clouds that will instead vanish and never be seen again, line them up in jars where they might be admired in the interim and tasted again as needed.
 Sentimental,I know, but still. She had basically just crawled into my brain. Because what I wouldn’t have done to put up a handful of those moonlit evenings, as well as that very moment itself – the (finally!) hot sun on my shoulders, the soft quilted picnic blanket (that I have yet to finish quilting) under my legs, the smell of the pond (whatever, I like that smell) – the last of the very few summery feelings I’d had all year. It was all too much. I packed up my shit, I rode back to the studio, and for christ’s sake I made a fucking necklace.
It has four Full Moons. Each one occurs in a month during which I experience some kind of major attitudinal shift or upheaval about life in general: the Harvest Moon in September, the Cold Moon (or Full Nights Moon) in December, the Pink Moon in April, and the Thunder Moon in July. How do I know about these moons? Because how could you not google various moon-related shit after the nights we’ve had?! Farmer’s Almanac, get familiar. A small cluster of twinkly pyrite stars hangs above them.
The summer is over, and no matter how many freaking vintage mason jars you’ve managed to collect, you can't put up those summer nights. Lord knows I tried.

3 comments:

miss hoax said...

just found this. and now i'm even more in awe of your brain - not only can you make your hands do the most amazing things, but you can write, too! it's not fair, kalpna!

but, keep doing it....

angelune said...

wowza. beautiful. xoxox

Tammy said...

And now I have just found this. (Sneaky girl, updating your blog secretly.) Beautifully put. Artistically rendered. I like that I get to partake of your shine sometimes. Cause you're fucking shiny.