Summer 007

"No, you were right, I was being morbid. Summer brings that out in me."
--Clarissa Vaughan, The Hours

"I'm reminiscing this right now."
--Neil Gaiman

Everyone who reads this blog knows that one of my primary modes is nostalgia; it's right up there with ambivalence. So today I finally lugged my fat ass out of the apartment to experience the world and buy ridiculously expensive moisturizers.

Today it was 73 degrees and sunny, just like summer, which is appropriate since Midsummer has passed, though everyone assures me that summer, de facto, doesn't come to the Pacific Northwest until July 4th--which I think is very patriotic of summer. It's time to break out my summer playlist. Anyway, I was enjoying the beautiful day sitting outside a Starbucks, reading The Iliad and sipping a black iced tea lemonade. And when I wasn't reading about Zeus calling Hera a bitch--how much do I love modern translations of Greek--I was reminiscing about past summers including the granddaddy of them all, Summer 2007--the gold standard by which I measure all summers.

And why did I love that summer so much? Let me tell you. But first I need to fix myself a Negroni, the nectar of nostalgia.
...
Ah, that's much better. So, where do I begin? Well, for starters, I was thin--the thinnest I've been in the last ten years. Ever since my last semester in college, I've been gaining weight, slowly but surely, something I hope to stop and even reverse this summer. And I loved walking the multi-mile Coal Creek Trail every few days and reading in East Canyon Park. It really was the perfect park/trail system.

I loved working at Iceberg Drive-Inn. No, really, I did. My very first job ever was at a Wendy's which also has the distinction of being the worst job I've ever had. So I was a little hesitant to work in fast food again, though if you've been to Iceberg, at least the one in Cedar, you know it's not exactly fast. However, I loved it. And as much as I bitch and moan about working, I'm usually a pretty kick-ass worker once I know what the hell I'm doing. And aside from a few annoying high school co-workers, it was fun, in the immortal words of Parker Posey. Just do the cones. See a lot of people come in--burgers, ice cream, anything. Cokes, just drive in a get a Coke if you're thirsty. And of course the fries--Iceberg has amazing fries!

The manager almost always left at 4:00, just an hour after I got there, so the rest of the time we were left unsupervised. My job performance and satisfaction improves greatly when I'm not being micro-managed or faced with inane corporate policies. I also got to gawk at my crush, who coincidentally was the brother of one of the team leaders. And since the store was attached to a Tommie's Donuts, I could take any leftover donuts home after closing since they would just be thrown away the next morning anyway. So I would always take some donuts to Ellen and we would watch Will & Grace before I went home, just across the street.

Ellen and I had a lovely time as neighbors when she wasn't driving off to Orem every other weekend courting her future husband, though that was when I used her account at Hollywood Video. I just loved living in quiet, little Cedar City over the summer. Every morning I would get a muffin (okay, cupcake) at the country store in the student center and eat breakfast in the Writing Center as I caught up on emails and gabbed with Chelsea. And I would read Virginia Woolf on campus, the beautiful campus.

I turned 21 which is such a great age, and even though I had a very modest birthday, I was young and legal all at the same time. I'm still young, I suppose, but every year we just keep getting older, and the moronic beauty of youth slips away, eluding us. I did have one major fuck-up that summer, which I didn't care about too much then being young and resentful, but that too has passed.

The coupe de grace, of course, was London. I won't get into all that; suffice it to say that London & Paris: amazing! Most likely the best two consecutive weeks of my life so far. While I was at home last week, my mother and I finally got all the pictures off my camera and selected the ones to keep in an album. It only took three years. Three years--it's a day and a lifetime.

I love summer, though it always brings out the nostalgia in me; perhaps that's why I love it. And while every summer provides me with great new memories and reading lists, I will always remember this summer. I'm reminded of the ultimate sentence of Little, Big: "Even the weather isn't as we remember it clearly once being; never lately does there come a summer day such as we remember; never clouds as white as that, never grass as odorous or shade as deep and full of promise as we remember they can be, as once upon a time they were."