Old Summer Nights

Wednesday – 06.29.22 

Sometimes it feels like I’m not as creative as I used to be – like I don’t have as strong a sense of imagery as I used to, and my writing suffers for it. Sometimes I think it’s because I don’t feel things as acutely, or as intensely, as I did before. Or maybe I’m just not going through as many emotionally charged episodes that stir up those feelings – wistful heartache, bittersweet longing, some familiar aching loneliness – that lead to what could be described as slightly masochistic inspiration.

            The possibility that instead of improving, I might be getting worse is honestly scary, and I feel like I need to draw inspiration from somewhere again. Maybe I’ll start going to cafes in the evenings to read and write; to enjoy some nice sleepy time tea before walking back home in the new dark and settling down for bed. Summer would be good for this – the crisp air and romanticism, the endless freedom and possibility of an open, sweltering night.

            I remember summers in my youth – in high school through university – when the world still felt so wide and expansive; when everything was bursting with some intangible, golden magic, and it seemed like nothing could be contained for very long.

            Even then, lingering in the blur of our collective periphery, there was a bittersweet sense that it was all fleeting – that all those tender moments of youthful joy would quietly pass, and we would never be able to hold onto them, no matter how hard we tried.

            In the face of this, we’d strive to make the most of things. We’d stay out late and scream into the cool night air, hold strangers’ hands and race through sudden thunderstorms – climb onto city rooftops and watch cars rumble through the stillness of those summer nights. Pool water on naked skin, first kisses through a chain-link fence – dancing into the early dawn and falling asleep in a mess of sweetly tangled limbs. We’d turn up all the notches and stir up any electricity we could, and there was something blissfully innocent about it all, untouched by the hard realities of adult life.

            Would it be naïve to hope that we could have that magic again, maybe if we turned and looked at things a different way? After all, it can’t be gone – it might just be a little harder to see. Perhaps “too late” is a prison we too easily make for ourselves, and perhaps all along we’ve been holding all the keys.

            It’s a nice thought, and I press it into my journal before I fall asleep.