Yard sale
Thoughts on being at one with sweat.
Yesterday I walked around my neighborhood as everyone laid out all their old things for people to peruse. A neighborhood wide yard sale was taking place and even though I couldn’t help but look, I didn’t buy anything.
Days like yesterday reminded me of why I love this place. All winter, Ohio is bleak and dreary and gray. The warmth comes back in crashing waves, only for our silly state to launch us inevitably back into the frigidity of winter one more time before spring can break. Yesterday was the first day of the year where I gave into the sweat. I felt its familiar discomfort and instead of panicking, I let it soak my skin and my clothes. I felt it running down the curve of my spine as I sat and drank a campari lemonade and watched the people shuffle up and down the sidewalk, pick up then set down my friends' old things.
I called someone on my walk home and felt bead after bead crawl down from the crook of my elbow, dropping to the ground. Before I used to be embarrassed about these little drops, but now I understand the wonders of my faithful body.
After this I went to pick up my uncle's sweet geriatric puppy Ruby from her stay at a boarding place 20 minutes away. Windows down, our hair and ears whipped around and I felt the all-encompassing warmth I'd been waiting for that comes with summer in Ohio. My summer favorites played and I felt comforted by their familiarity.
Summer sounds are just nostalgia if you ask me: tracks from favorite summer movies like the Sandlot and Adventureland, an ice cream truck making its way down the street, sheets of rain hitting the window, the whir of an always going fan.
I’ve been thinking about my childhood a lot lately, wondering if my younger self would find it curious how I spend time enjoying life as an adult, sitting on a friend's couch and drinking wine and laughing about a pathetic years-long “situationship.”
Would she find it curious how slow I live, how many records I own, how much weed I smoke, what my pastimes are? Would she see my friends with as much admiration and joy and pride as I do? Would she be proud of me, or would she match those deep, innermost thoughts that tell me everything I do is wrong, that I’m selfish, that I will never amount to anything worth remembering? Did these inner thoughts build up like heat on a summer day in her mind like they do in mine, threatening to burn down any positive thoughts that go too far?
No, she would be playing outside, riding her bike down our ½ mile long street and gathering flowers from the neighbors carefully planted landscapes (much to their chagrin). She’d be eating a turkey sandwich with a glass of crystal light lemonade at her babysitter's house, watching Ellen or music videos on CMT. She’d be trying, for the 100th time, to figure out how to hook up her dads turntable to listen to The Mama’s and The Papa’s “California Dreamin’.” She’d be dreaming about the same things I do now, amounting to something more than just a cog in the machine. She’s so different but she is, of course, so me.
Is it the summer air, the refreshed will to live, that makes me introspective? I can’t say for sure. But I can feel it coming to a head and I can’t help but give in to thinking about myself just a little bit, despite my best efforts not to. So I guess here I am, doing it.
Yesterday I also stopped into one of my favorite record shops, flipping through the titles ready to bring something home. I can always find something to add to my collection at Spoonful and someone behind the counter is always ready to listen about why I love this or give their input on why they love that and it’s just like a little slice of high fidelity down the block.
I was floored to see a young girl appear next to me and pick up a copy of From Under The Cork Tree by Fall Out Boy, an album I also very much enjoyed when I was her age. We talked about which other FOB albums we liked. My personal peak was Infinity on High. I was in fifth grade when it came out and I dragged my mother to the local Hot Topic to get a copy so I could get a free Infinity On High t-shirt with purchase. I went to a Catholic school all my life where uniforms were mandatory. I just couldn’t wait to wear my new shirt, so I put it on one Friday and threw a hoodie over it–my foolish teachers would be none the wiser!
That was until it was time for church that day. Stations of the cross specifically, which, if you’re lucky enough to have never attended, involves a lot of kneeling, standing, singing, and incense. It’s a very long, warm, and overwhelming ritual, sensory-wise. Someone passed out nearly every week.
After station four or five (there are 14), I started to see stars, feel my heartbeat quicken, and my internal temperature rise. I went to my teacher and said I was feeling dizzy. She brought me to the bridal suite of the church and told me to lie down, suggesting perhaps I take off the sweatshirt. Little did she know I was sporting an out of dress code Fall Out Boy t-shirt underneath and more afraid of getting caught disobeying than losing consciousness. Further panicking, I insisted I was fine, I just needed a few minutes to cool down, maybe a glass of water (which isn’t allowed during church normally). I’d felt silly and regretful for putting myself in that position, but I’d still gotten away with my little act of rebellion and that made it worthwhile to me.
All this to say, it made me smile to see myself mirrored in this sweet angel at the record shop with her dad. My dad never took me shopping for records, but to this day I still parse through his collection to take what I like, as if this could take the place of a memory like the one being made at Spoonful that day. It started with the Mama’s and the Papa’s, then Carole King and James Taylor, then Springsteen, CCR, Seals and Crofts, Stevie Wonder.
If only my dad loved Pete Wentz as much as I did.
There’s always something to savor. There’s always going to be people and places you don’t want to leave, a book you don’t want to put down, an album or a concert you don’t want to end, a night you wish could go on forever. All these things come to an end. That doesn’t make all those things not worth doing or appreciating.
I savored the sweat and the heat because it was one I wish would never end. It did, obviously. All good things do eventually. This is a deep disconnect with life I’ve had for a long time–why even partake if the event at hand will come to an inevitable close? Why even put in the energy when the efforts won’t reap any rewards? Why why why?
That’s life baby.
But I will keep doing all the things, going to the concerts, listening to the albums, drinking the campari lemonades, staying out just more hour than I’d like to squeeze another moment of pleasant consciousness from the days I wish wouldn’t end. But now I won’t sweat through these things, or if I do, I’m finally conditioned to accept it.
Is that all there to do? Lately that’s how I’ve felt–just pushing through one moment to get to the next. Staying up late dreaming of the next day only for the morning to come and wish it’d be night again. At least in summer, the days are longer and the songs are more fun and the will to live is renewed and you can go outside and take in clouds and blue sky instead of an endless horizon of bleh. At least in summer there is sun, even if eventually it sets. The sweat will dry and the fire will burn out and then what’s left?
Nothing new, and that’s alright. There is beauty in coming to terms with mundanity, and then deciding it’s time to burn the whole thing down.