The Rice Bowl

We Could Feel Alive

I can hardly believe it's summer again.  It seems like it never comes fast enough and then when it's upon me, I can't believe it's here.  The world smells like freshly cut wood and newly stained decks.  The wind is heavy with heat and the sun feels like a lover's touch against my skin, leaving its mark on my bare shoulders in the form of freckles.  I have a brand new wide brimmed, floppy straw hat.  I have a brand new pair of sunglasses that make me feel like Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's.  "Don't you just love Tiffany's?"  It rings in my head as I sit under the umbrella in the back garden next to the daisies that I helped plant last summer.

The soundtracks of previous summers float through my stereo.  Angels and Airwaves, Jack's Mannequin, Dashboard Confessional, Mae, Something Corporate, Yellowcard, No Doubt.  Thousands of hot summer days filled with make believe loves and pretend broken hearts.  A thousand wishes to be the girl that the summer soundtrack was written about.  How many summers did I spend riding my bike up and down the street and jumping into the swimming pool in awkward bikinis?  Millions.

I think I've lived my life for summers.  For the airports and plane rides, the books and the authors, the heat and the water, the promises that summer friendships would last forever and the wishes that summer would never end.

The fridge smells like strawberries, my favourite flowers are in bloom in all of their bright white and yellow happiness, the jars of sun tea reflect and twinkle in the daylight and the green bottles of sparkling water replenish my joy.  How is it that all these feelings, dreams, and memories can fit so well in a bottle of sparkle water?  I miss ice cold glasses of Tiger beer at 10 am, but the memory is still there everytime a lager lands in my hand.  The strawberries, even when they're cold they taste hot with a hint of dirt, like when I would pull them secretly off the bushes in the yard, tart and sweet.

Summer...I love you.  Please, let this be the year that you never leave me

Dreamer to a Dream.

I've been a quiet girl lately, though, that doesn't mean the world has stopped spinning beneath my feet, leaving me intoxicatingly dizzy.  Did I just make up a word?  Perhaps I did.  With the headache of finals and school behind me (for now), I've been unwinding into the summer.  The beautiful season of sun and warmth that I have desperately missed.  Unfortunately, it seems that most of my summer has been rainy, then again, this has left time for me to catch up on sleep that I lost during that last month of school.

Not only that, but I've made a dent in the pile of books I've been meaning to read but never found the time to follow their delightful words into lives that are not my own.  Again, I've realized how much I miss my books.  Thankfully, school brought me back to a passion that had fallen by the wayside over the years: poetry.  I've rediscovered the poets that captivated me as a teenager (wow, I'm no longer a teenager, when did that happen?) and found voices that are new to me, that I can tuck away with the familiar.  Though, I lack the skill to sting the perfect words together to mean more than the world of prose, I find myself sighing over the words I read and hearing myself say, "I wish I could write like that," or "I hope someone pauses at the words I write someday."

Of course, I managed a trip to the city I love, Seattle, to visit GracefullyPunk for a weekend.  Lovely, beautiful, I long to be in that city too.  There's something right about a city where the streets seem to smell like coffee and the market in all of its chaotic glory is my favourite place to be.  I'm constantly amazed at how at home I feel when I'm sitting on the waterfront, eating a fresh baked piroshky, sipping an iced coffee, and watching the ferry boats pass by.  It's not even my city, but everytime I'm there, I feel alive again, connected.  Maybe one day I'll get to call it my home.  I miss it everytime I have to leave again.

And now I'm staring down the two weeks....yes, 14 days...until I finally get to see my parents and brother again; the few people I can actually and comfortably be myself around.  When your best friends are a thousand million miles away and you only get to see them for a few weeks once a year, the excitement of an impending visit leaves me nothing but giddy and anxious.  Time can't seem to move fast enough right now and time will move far too fast when they're finally here.  We're hitting the road (and airways) and running amock through a summer of fun...and I can hardly wait.  I've been counting the days for months, and it's finally almost here!

Of course there have been other happenings and mishaps in my life recently, though they will reveal themselves in due time.  Some of them, I'm still waiting to see what happens and hoping that something happens.  Until then, my breath is held and I'm wishing on all the stars I see.