A review of June

I start the month welcoming my mom to the city for a visit. We tuck ourselves away upstate in Kingston, surrounded by tall trees and a thick quiet. We go walking on nearby trails and have beers on the porch. We reflect on five-year increments of our lives, discussing what stood out, what we learned and have carried with us. We visit breweries and book stores. We play bean bags as Joey runs excitedly between us carrying the bags to and fro. We watch Great British Bake Off and make charcuterie boards. Our time together feels deeply special and I am sad to see her leave.

It’s a busy month of travel and work. I quite like the busyness, feeling a sort of readiness for it. I pick up my camera more than I have in a long time, flexing both familiar and entirely new creative muscles. It feels exciting and fulfilling. I leave the city a number of times and feel rejuvenated by it. I let my writing and meditation practices slip even more, feeling a lack of space and energy for it. I remind myself that I’ll find my way back to it when the moment requires it. And on the flip side of that, I note an undercurrent of feeling restless. Antsy, perhaps. I sit with it, trying to trace its origins, though the feeling of not wanting to sit still gnaws at me often.

I photograph four weddings throughout the month, ranging from an intimate ceremony in the West Village to a boathouse in Prospect Park to an eclectic, warehouse-like wedding in Hudson. At one particular wedding at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens, we watch as lightning electrifies the sky and dark clouds begin to hover during the outdoor ceremony. As the vows commence, rain pours down suddenly. Umbrellas erect rapidly and everyone bolts for cover. It’s chaotic and exhilarating.

I spend a long weekend in Connecticut photographing a recently-renovated home. I know very little going into the project and am properly stunned to arrive to such a stunning location and home. I buy an unruly head of lettuce and brilliantly red tomatoes from the farmer’s market and focaccia, biscuits, and cheese from a recommended bakery. I devour cherry and dark chocolate ice cream from a local shop. I sip coffee in the mornings and whiskey in the evenings. I take naps with Joey tucked in beside me. I read my book on the back deck and watch as the sky turns from periwinkle to ink blue. I sit under twinkly lights well into the night. I listen to Fleetwood Mac as I cook. I place my feet in the backyard stream and walk barefoot on the grass. I find it difficult to fall asleep, as the property is so completely quiet. But I relish in it.

This month I have an abnormal craving for sour candy and eat copious amounts of Starbursts. I watch Love Island (lavishly so) and The Bear. I eat naan bread slicked in olive oil and cherries by the handful, hands stained red. I read steamy romance novels all month (a summer theme it seems). I buy many bouquets of peonies, marveling endlessly at how such a seemingly simple thing feels so lush and delightful. I start drinking black tea regularly in the afternoons and seem to be on an orange wine kick. I devour ice cream with olive oil and sea salt as I stroll through Park Slope, fingers sticky and smelling of vanilla. I stop, too, at the ice cream truck that parks at the end of my street a number of times (twist cones, always). I drink chai at Daughter and write in my journal after a month-long hiatus.

The words start to come back the latter half of the month. I find myself opening my pocket-sized journal and writing. One-off sentences to start, but then the pages begin to fill. The desire to return to this space, too, returns. I’m reminded that I can trust myself, that my timeline and my flow are my own. That I’m in tune enough with myself to recognize and answer the nudges when they come.

At some point I realize I’ve officially been living in New York for four years, the longest I’ve lived anywhere on my own. I’m jolted back to June of 2019, when I arrived early in the month to begin a five-week intensive before my graduate program started in the fall. It was a whirlwind and intense and exhausting, but my goodness, I was so wholly alive. So wholly in it. It feels like yesterday and it also feels like a lifetime ago.

After a long season of depression and nearly leaving New York last summer, I find myself in a different place now. Reflecting on the last year, life is better. I’m doing better. My job is going well and I quite like it. I’ve spent another year in Crown Heights, loving my little pocket even more. It feels like a big deal, having logged four years in this city. I feel a mix of immense pride in somehow pulling it off and also a deep ache for the hard seasons I’ve lived here. For now though, I feel content. I I feel glad I stayed.

I end the month drinking wine with my neighbors, with our pups playing beside us. I marvel at my luck in meeting them, knowing them. While I still sometimes fixate on how having Joey has created some limitations on my life, he has also deeply expanded it. Thanks to him, what was once only a hello in passing has now become a familiar and exceedingly generous friendship. It accentuates the greatest pleasure of apartment life, and this experience settles into my psyche as evidence for how unbelievably beautiful and connective such a type of home can be.

Cheers to July. <3