Cozy Summer
Full of glories
Greetings, Blueberries!
I have so many drafts and ideas I want to share with you beautiful people, but alas I’ve been otherwise occupied with saying “That’s not for babies!” 500 times a day to a person who could not care less about their fragility of life.
What are you up to??
Since summer is not one of my top 3 seasons, I’m approaching it more creatively this year. Before I get to my Summer Strategy, here’s my philosophy behind it…
So I’ve been wanting to get a tattoo of the Southern Cross (Crux) constellation for years.
My Australian friends gently dissuade me as apparently it has some weird nationalist connotations Down Under, but for me it would be a reminder of the constant “and” of life.
It’s Summer here, and, in the Southern Hemisphere, it’s winter.
The Western tradition tells us one way to do things, and the Eastern tells us another.
The North Star is the great navigational guide, and the Southern Cross is a different one.
We look for “True North” and others look for “True South.”
I’ve journaled so many different ways of saying this same thing, because it never ceases to shock and comfort me at the same time.
Looking for the “and” resulted in ideas for so many of my illustrations:
What’s the narrative I’m seeing all over my feed, and what’s the story that’s being left out?
When I teach writing, I like to explore the power of subversion: What story are people expecting, and what’s the more compelling version?
(e.g. What if you walk into an old abandoned house and find comfort? What if you stroll into a sun-bathed wildflower meadow and feel uneasy?)
What is the and in this situation?
What is the story that isn’t being told?
Here are some examples of how to subvert the audience’s (and your own!) expectations:
1. Inquire “What’s the question you wish people would ask you?”
In the current social media zeitgeist, pain is regularly rewarded over joy. The algorithms (and maybe our own attention) gravitate toward stories of suffering, injustice, and struggle—a positive overcorrection to decades of ignoring them!
But they can become so expected that we stop investigating the parts of a person's life that aren't organized around hardship.
Pain deserves witness and joy deserves witness.
Below, Mark Povinelli, an actor with dwarfism, says that he’s never asked “What’s great about being a little person?”
A lot of talk around disability sees only the challenge, or only the triumph-over-adversity story that flattens a person into a lesson.
In my favorite TED talk, Joshua Prager calls the “or” story a “palatable narrative.”
Reality hands us two truths at once, and when we can’t stomach both, we eliminate one. No matter how stark the reality, we trim it into a story we already know how to feel about.
The suffering story is palatable. The overcomer story is palatable. The creepy abandoned house and the blissful meadow are palatable. None of these are lies, but they polish the narrative into one clean feeling in place of two smudgy ones.
The less palatable story is the true one: the bad thing sucks, and life is beautiful. Holding both is harder than choosing one, which is why we so rarely do it.
This TED talk affected so much of my writing during the aftermath of my father’s death and all my smudgy feelings: You never have to call the bad thing good in order to notice that the world is still full of glories.
2. Ask yourself, “What would surprise me about this situation?”
Did you know that the funniest thing to a baby is a very minor surprise? I can easily crack up Mari Jr just by changing the tone of my voice or switching up a pattern.
If you’re a comedian who wants an easy audience, take your stand-up to a room full of babies and just occasionally lower or raise your voice. Instant, uproarious laughter.
The geniuses who write for babies know this; the best children’s books and songs are full of simple surprises that blow the tiny minds of little ones.
My favorite children’s song is also a writing lesson for me. In “Bear Song,” Lianne Bassin (who I met/adored on a retreat I hosted last year!) wrote this on a Yellowstone hike as a way to make noise to keep the bears away.
I LOVE how the song imagines the bears enjoying the music so much that they agree to keep their distance: a fun surprise in a dangerous situation!
3. Watch animals and children.
These magical creatures, so embodied and unedited, don’t concern themselves with consistency.
Entirely disinterested in a coherent narrative about themselves, children and animals violate the stories that adult humans expect; they are erratic, contradictory, and clearly expressive about whatever they’re feeling in a given second. It’s scrumptious!
Maurice Sendak, a king of children’s literature, spent his whole career defending children’s right to unresolved feelings. In Where the Wild Things Are, home is safe and confining so Max leaves in search of somewhere frightening and welcoming. Max was annoyed and happy and homesick and adventurous.
A lot of good children’s literature is kind of eerie and unsettling (see also: Don Bluth animated movies), which I owe to the acceptable smudginess of feeling. Adult people are comfortable when their expectations match reality, which is not how the child world works.
I use these practices to live creatively: Looking for the “and” in my own life.
If the current narrative isn’t working for me, can I invite in its opposite? What if a dark sky was a good omen and sunshine was a reason to stay home? What if the story I’m telling myself had an alternate narrator?
Since I struggle a bit with the endlessness and vastness of summer, I’m wondering to myself, “What if summer could be cozy and contained?”
It’s a kind of Gregory Maguire approach to a well-worn story: What if good was bad and bad was good and summer was hygge and hot weather meant cozy and a heatwave was an opportunity for inward reflection while the cold months invigorated us and thus led to more socializing?
Here are my cozy summer activities:
*Brain puzzles and juggling: Exercising only my mind is a cozy activity that is also highly necessary as I feel my brain grooves smooth over with every new tab I open on my browser. When I’m too distracted to read but need to sharpen up my mind after a 90 Day Fiancé binge, I open my beloved book of puzzles and go to town.
Lying on an overgrown grass lawn doing a word search is right up there with lying in a hammock reading a plastic-crinkle-covered library book in terms of midsummer contentment.
When I’m not increasing grey matter by sorting words into categories, I’m promoting neuroplasticity by teaching myself how to juggle!
Since I spend a lot of time sitting on the floor in Mari Jr’s room doing nothing but trying to keep this maniac alive, I decided to keep my brain cells and my baby happy by throwing things into the air and catching them.
I’m still only on two balls, but I’m hopeful that by next month I can graduate to three…and then hire myself out as children’s birthday party entertainment.
In other analog activity news, I bought Mr. Mari a Camp Snap camera as an anniversary present and we’ve been having fun marveling at our own screen-free photography skills. It functions like a disposable camera, without the…disposability. And easily downloads to a phone. Fun!
I’ve got my eye on this video camcorder for my next suburban cocktail party in my imagined life on Mad Men.
*Cooling myself down: You can’t be cozy without being cool! I’m easily swayed by any marketing that promises “cooling” of any sort, including “cooling eyeshadow” which is a preposterous concept but actually so pleasant.
Every part of my body deserves its own tiny refrigerated experience! (See also: “zingy” cooling deodorant with an alpine chill—why not!, and a scalp treatment that feels like heaven after a sweaty day)
I discovered this “cooling short” (saying “short” in the singular is always funny to me even though I guess it’s correct) and it really does make a difference when I’m loafing around in one of my Little Mari on the Prairie dresses.
(Obviously a swipe of Megababe is a must for summer frocks, too…if only they made a cooling version!?)
And finally, I’m perfectly happy to just spray water on my face all day like grocery store product, but this mist feels reeeeally luxe and can revive my spirit after it deflates into something akin to a puddle of flat sticky soda on the subway floor.
*Wearing nightgowns: Of course, nightgowns are the coziest summer garment, and did you know that you can do many of your summer activities while wearing one?
My nightgowned activities so far have included: answering the door for UPS, running down to my apartment lobby to grab the newspaper, making a flight of purées for an 11-month-old gourmand, and waking up several times during the night to adjust the air conditioner. I wear this one all day and this one all night.
*Visiting cozy places: Last month I took one of my famous “Mar-cations” where I go on a long solo train journey to a walkable town and plant myself there for a few days.
This time I selected “The North Fork” (of Long Island), which I chose entirely because of a cheap Airbnb with a promise of ice cream nearby. Enough for me!!
A small seaside town has to be the most cozy summer setting, yes??
And I did all my very favorite solitary activities…
I took so many walks while wearing polka dots, I must have set some kind of world record.
Cozy summer activity: For lunch, get a double scoop of ice cream and lap it up while strolling through a residential neighborhood and listening to a comfort podcast.
One afternoon I stumbled upon a deer gathering a most peaceful old cemetery, and spent a couple hours reading every stone—so many young men who died at sea! Then I noticed dozens of weathered, unmarked little gravestones on the outskirts—a potter’s field, perhaps? I picked wildflowers and scattered them around. Who were these people? What were their favorite ice cream flavors?
I was so content to just roam the gravestones and boat supply shops (ahem, shoppes) in town, but on a whim I walked to the beach and found this little slice of Greece right in New York!!
I realized that the coziest shorelines are pebble beaches, and I delighted myself by collecting the prettiest stones in the water before sending them back out to enjoy their sparkling lives in the Long Island Sound.
Since I returned back to my duties of keeping a baby from trying to eat electrical cords while pretending I still have time and energy for work, I’ve been challenging myself to “find the cozy” in each day….even during the heatwaves.
While my creative output (the kind you can see with your eyeballs) is nonexistent, my creative living is flourishing. Does that count? It has to count!
I hope you, too, are thriving in ways seen and unseen, and that you’re creating the season you want for yourself in any hemisphere!
Once again, you are BRILLIANT!
As a Brazilian I support the Cruzeiro do Sul tattoo. It is the first think I look up on the sky when the city allows me to see the stars.
There's also a legend that the constelation is actually the indígenous warrior Sepe Tiaraju, who fought in colonial times when Spain and Portugal were deciding which territory they would steal.