When I'm sat in the library, attempting to centre my mind on the Haitian revolution, or late Antiquity, or understand what these absurdly complicated words mean, I find myself wandering down the sun-drenched streets of an ambiguous European city, eating fresh bread, drinking sweet nectar.
And I blink. Forcing myself back to the words on the page.
"...this concept of culture has been the development of a doctrine of cultural relativism", I feign to read.
But still the hint of summer glow burns inside. And dancing on the pages are fresh alpine lakes and the fading richness of Rivièra maisonettes, and tanned skin and golden hair and hours spent devouring fiction, drunk off the abundance of sun.
I cannot stop thinking about summer.
Endless possibilities and googled flights and penciled dates and vague plans leave me with a summer that could be impossibly busy, or empty and yearning.
Take a second to drink the golden warmth of these pics.
Ah.
there is nothing left to worry about
the sun and her flowers are here
(Rupi Kaur, bit overdone but apt)
This summer I hope for: picnics with friends, days spent drinking and eating into a blissful indulgence, swimming in port meadow, allowing the stress of exams to disappear, days and days and days spent reading and sleeping, eating fresh bread and nectarines for breakfast, listening to foreign tongues, churches, galleries, sunsets, spontaneity, barbecues, English coastlines, Sevillian sun, Italian gelato (except not), Adriatic sea, and just days with friends and days alone and to absorb the orange warmth that summer brings. Maybe I'll volunteer in Greece, maybe I'l float around Italy, maybe we'll actually make it to Spain. Time and money are both limiting (even tho I've been skimping and saving like a bitch for summer) but even looking at the pictures gives me a warmth.
So many of these memories and dreams are idealised, and summer is also filled with exams and stress and the worries of every day life, and I'll have to work (reality check!), but it does feel a little better.
And just the rose tinted hope of such days is enough.
Hope ur all well. Currently sat in the garden in the sun, feeling accidentally quite hungover (questioning why I feel ill then remembering last nights double vodkas), mustering the discipline to cycle to the library.
But just 5 more minutes of sun.
(pics are either from pinterst (see here), cutouts of Frankie magazine or just some photos from holidays gone)
