Dear July, three & four: snapshots.

Dear July,

Yesterday was: waking up to sun, eating apples in the garden, painted toenails, driving in the heat with the air con up and the windows down justacrack (because, as I still haven’t shaken my insect phobia, I've pledged an oath to myself ‘to never – not even on the three sweltering days Scotland has in the year – open the car windows wider than a pinkie’s width while driving’ – because if a wasp flew in, I would surely die). It was sun on my shoulders, and buskers by the library, and sunglasses reflecting steeples. A conversation that wound up and down and around a hill and in and out of city streets. It was promenading Shakespeare in the park, bumping shoulders with close-packed play-watchers, laughter and ridiculous disguises and then holding-our-breath silence (the city beyond the park gates humming) as the play took a turn from the comic to tragic – ‘Worthies, away! the scene begins to cloud’.

Today was: waking up to rain smattering in the gutter outside my window and then gushing through the roof onto the floor of our sitting room, my dad running down the stairs to grab the recycling bin in lieu of a bucket to catch the water (the perils of having an old house). It was a leaf stuck to the kitchen window, and the opening lines from Don Paterson’s 'Rain' in my head:

I love all films that start with rain:
rain, braiding a windowpane
or darkening a hung-out dress
or streaming down her upturned face...

It was frying sausages, and looking through Pinterest recipes, and smashing digestive biscuits with a rolling pin to make a cheesecake crust. Taco salad, and talking with my Mum on the sofa, and folding laundry (‘Life is really just a series of washing the dishes and folding pants, isn’t it?’ ‘Mmm. Daily rituals...’). Hearing fireworks outside and thinking of my American friends dotted about the globe. Reading some literary theory and realising that, after avoiding him for years, I may need to take a look at Derrida. Listening to Bon Iver with the slow cooker bubbling in the next room.

♥

Yesterday’s poem: Lamium by Louise Gluck. Today’s: Margaret Atwood’s The Moment.

Pictures by: Me Suk Lee.