The solstice round-up ☀️
🐚 🕶️ 🌴 H.A.G.S. 👙 🌭 🪩
Hi my friends! June 20th marks the solstice and the official start of summer. Here are twenty ideas on how to pass the time:
Practice The Artist’s Way.
Keep a watchful eye out for fireflies.
Volunteer at a community garden and try not to kill anything.
Befriend the kind man who parks his ice cream truck in front of your office, and not just because he’ll treat you to a free cone.
Take the long way home from work one evening. Learn the art of meandering, and find the joy in stumbling across something new.
If at any point along the way home you pass by a Claire’s, consider getting another piercing, just for the hell of it.
Sign up for a weird adventure— whether it’s a trapeze class, a meditation with horses or a photoshoot that captures your aura on film.
Whenever possible, do life outdoors. Drive-in movies, riverside salsa nights, park concerts. You will sweat and you will smell, but so will everyone else.
Find time to record the sounds you hear. At the beach, at the block party, or at the barbecue. Stitch the recordings together and make your own song of the summer.
Some day parties and club events will offer a limited number of free tickets. Reserve a ridiculous amount of them. You will find a coalition of the willing, even if it’s a motley crew. And the bouncer will forever remember you as the cheapskate who hoarded seventeen tickets under her name.
Read Women Who Run with Wolves. It will help you find delirious pleasure in walking through a rainstorm, even if you have no umbrella and ten blocks to go.
In any city, there’s always a rooftop with minimal security and maximum views. Find out where it is, and find someone who’ll sneak in with you.
If the only way to sneak into said rooftop is by piling into the trunk of a car with five new friends, hop in and pray to God you’ll survive the drive.
Watch a woman in her seventies take center stage at the Central Park drum circle. Figure out in that precise moment who you want to be when you grow up.
If you find yourself in a cemetery at night surrounded by a few friends and too many bottles of wine, remember you are in excellent company, and offer the spirits something to drink.
You are never too old to stand at the edge of the ocean and search through the sand for pretty little shells to show off to your friends.
Take yourself on a solo day trip, preferably near a body of water. Keep no souvenirs besides the memory of the sunset and the soundtrack to your drive home.
Stay out way past your bedtime. Yes, it will stupefy and even infuriate you to see the sun begin to rise as you reach home. But you’ll be able to recall that night better than most.
The cure to a late night out? Call those same friends who partied with you and drag them to Coney Island. Then make them ride The Cyclone.
Every summer is singular. You will never be twenty again, spending an afternoon in Austin at a chicken- shit bingo tournament. You will never be twenty five again, sharing a room in the Hamptons with a revolving door of housemates. You might not be able to repeat that same magic, but you can always pursue a spirit of youthful mischief and wonder. And that’ll always lead to something good.
I hope you have a singular summer.
LG aka Lauren aka Lali Gonzali
