late spring, early summer

Summer is a really slow time in life, I am discovering. Everyone I know either lives way too far away, or works a lot. And me and all my friends seem to spend our summers growing apart from each other.

Which kind of sucks, in my mind. There is not a lot to write about without friends.

My friend asked me, via a letter, if "it is harder or more hurtful to dream... does it hurt more now than when we were kids because we have lost a significant chunk of our faith/hope"? I'm not completely sure.

Apart from being with people, it is difficult to have faith/hope. I would like to think that when I grow up I'm not going to just lose child-likeness because of too much harsh reality. If anything, I should be allowed to hope for better things, or to hope for the same things in better and creative ways...

as opposed to living a life-less existence of a summer. It is true that creativity is not always valued in the day-to-day summer life of work, but I also think that a lot can be learned from this idea of a 'sacred ordinary'- that there is great truth in the everyday of life.

A long time ago I brought up the idea of a 'grace in imperfection'- almost as if to say that life is enjoyed more imperfectly, not stressing out about the bad stuff but just enjoying it as a whole. For me, thinking about life in these terms just seems to take a great weight off of me, and reminds me that we really should enjoy life... not just 'get through' it.

This is all to say I'm still trying to figure out how to deal with summers, when all the people I really like aren't around to talk about all this with. Summers have always been an inbetween thing for me- lived between the seeing and the missing of friends.

So whatever. In a couple weeks I'm driving down to the Oregon coast for a couple days. If you have any ideas for how I can get creatively inspired these weeks, let me know. I'll do the same.

later


Listening to: John Legend- come home.