Everything I Loved in June

Songs about jealousy, a softer approach to celebrations, and a watermelon hack

Jul 03, 2024

∙ Paid

Happy Blueberry Season, Beloveds :)

I’ve been doing my usual teeter-totter between basking in the longness and slowness of summer, and shooing it to come on hurry up through the over-baked afternoons and charred evenings.

I did get to spend a week in Wyoming, which was such a different flavor of summer than I’ve ever tasted: hail at high altitudes, dry cold evenings, and a climate that seems primarily suited to support large areas of dust.

I’m sure I was a speck of dust in a former life because I really like this type of terrain and temperature; it reminds me a lot of Patagonia and Andalusia and California and other Spanish-speaking olive-growing lands where it only makes sense to take a few hours off when the sun’s movement crescendoes.

I’m still processing all the thoughts that glided back and forth into my brain during a week in the middle of emptiness with no cell service or internet to cut the space into fragments.

In so much vacancy, thoughts can stretch and spread out fully with no risk of interruption. I was surprised how far they expanded.

All photos by the most darling/talented Emily, who brought her camera and her sweetness to all our retreat excursions

I’ve never been to a place as quiet as Wyoming.

And thus, my reentry to New York was cautious and methodical. I wanted to hang on to the stillness as long as possible. I’m hoarding the remainders of it.

I didn’t fill June with too much more than that, but of course I still have recommendations for you that I’ve been itching to share:

READING

How much do you know about North Korea!?

A few weeks ago I asked what my mom was reading lately. She started summarizing this collection of stories from people who escaped North Korea, and I couldn’t stop asking questions: Then what?? But what about! Okay so they…??

When she finished it, I was eager to dive in, and I’ve actually had to ration my reading because Nothing to Envy (the title taken from a slogan the North Korean regime cooked up to inspire its people: “We have nothing to envy in the world”) is TOO interesting. I was beginning to neglect my bodily needs in favor of finishing a chapter so I had to impose a limit!

I became particularly interested in the moment when these particular North Koreans realized that there was a bigger world out there where they could come closer to living a full, authentic life.

For one person, it was accidentally picking up TV signal from South Korea. From another, it was finding a contraband copy of Gone With the Wind at the library. Small relics from another world were breadcrumbs leading these individuals toward a life they could have never imagined after decades of brainwashing.

As an avid consumer of documentaries and books about cults (maybe because I’m so drawn to cult-ish experiences!?), I’ve noticed that people who are victims of indoctrination often experience one lightning-bolt moment where their conditioning becomes crystal-clear: There is a bigger world out there. There is a bigger life possible.

To say I was impressed by the North Koreans interviewed for this book would be a massive understatement; they had to grapple with so many competing beliefs in order to liberate themselves, and lord knows how much they risked in order to leave.

I don’t know if there is anything I respect more than someone who is able to look their values in the face and change them, not to mention being willing to die for the sake of a changed mind.

Dave’s Wonder-ings

In the symbiosis of friendship, I believe there are two roles: the one who recommends, and the one who is recommended to.

Even though I send a monthly newsletter with my recommendations, in reality it’s a collage of media that has been recommended to me.

And, let’s face it, it’s often from the same person. In my case, it’s Dave.

Dave is one of my all-time favorite thinkers; I often go to him when I’m unsure how I feel about something. He’ll provide a poem, a series of quotes, a few books, or his own thoughts cobbled-together from a community of favored writers, movies, pop songs, old hymns, and history lessons.

He’s started his own newsletter, primarily a place to store the hymns he writes (!). At the end of each submission, he’ll include “Wonder-ings”—things he’s read and pondered recently.

This recent one is a personal favorite (as a big Brian Doyle fan), but all of them are worth perusing if you’re on the hunt for soulful media guidance.

EATING

I follow Ayurveda all year round, but its teachings become particularly important during summer.

Ayurveda (which is Sanskrit for “the wisdom of life”) teaches that each person has the excess of a certain quality, and mine is pitta (heat).

So, during Pitta Season, my inner heat is out of control and my goal is to manage all that swelling fire with cooling foods and practices.

(Sorry, there is literally no way for me to explain this without sounding at least moderately cuckoo.)

To break it down into a few tips:

-Keep cold rosewater handy for spraying the heat away (I also spritz it into my dry eyes first thing in the morning and on airplanes)

-Add fresh cooling herbs to your meals: cilantro, mint, dill, fennel, coriander, and cardamom

-Instead of ice water (which doesn’t hydrate well!), keep cool mint water and sun tea in the fridge

-Add lime instead of lemon to your water (lime is cooling, lemon is heating!)

-Speaking of which, eating high-water-content food is intuitive in the summer, but also so beneficial, especially for us Pittas! My friend Bradley has the ultimate watermelon hack for the ultimate inner cooling:

monacle

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(ps. If you’re curious about Ayurvedic nutrition, I’ve been meeting online with the LOVELY and super-reasonably-priced Claudia for a year and the difference in my energy is night and day! I’m not getting any benefit from sharing her with y’all, apart from the joy of knowing that you might feel as good as I do :)))

WATCHING

The Last Repair Shop

Here’s a 39-minute gift to humanity:

The summary:

In a warehouse in the heart of Los Angeles, a dwindling handful of devoted craftspeople maintain more than 80,000 student musical instruments, the largest remaining workshop in America of its kind. Meet four unforgettable characters whose broken-and-repaired lives have been dedicated to bringing so much more than music to the schoolchildren of this city.

The effect:

Remembering what it is that keeps us all going on during our most trying times, emotionally re-connecting us to our community, and reminding us that nothing is so broken that it can’t be (quite easily) repaired by someone who cares.