Summertime softening
in which my whole world softens so I can wrap my arms around her
Summertime softening
my whole green world
Sometimes we write about summer as a season of expansion. Summer can feel BIG: the vibrant colors, the rainbow of flowers and the juicy fruits in luscious bloom, the bright sun and radiant heat, the endless nights filled with experience and sensation, the emotional resonance and release of an electric, soaking summer thunderstorm.
And yet–and yet, I’m realizing, in my own reflection on how this season makes my body feel and what my body needs and is longing for in this season, that it is not quite “expansion” that I’m seeking in summertime.
Really, what I am seeking is a softening, a turning inwards, a simplification, a stripping down; even a shutting down, a gentle conservation of energy. My body seeks its yearly summertime softening.
I spend a lot of time in other seasons of the year very “on.” I’m using this word to thread through various images and metaphors for my lived seasonal experience. One thing I mean is that I am very alert and awake. Lots of things are happening in my everyday life. I’m remaining present to all of them. One of the things that’s happening is that I’m a teacher. This means that, several times a week, I put on a performance. I wear clothing that I do not wear during the moments when I am not “on,” I get up in front of a room, I have props and lines that I share, I make big gestures and demonstrative facial expressions, I tell stories both from history and vulnerably from my own life, I facilitate all kinds of discussions and activities, I sink deeply into the practice of active and attentive listening. I hold space. I create a space. Rooms of young people are looking at me (and some are NOT looking at me, which asks for its own kind of energy from me) and expecting me to conjure up some kind of experience for us to share in this room that we are inhabiting. All of this requires an incredible amount of energy.
My voice aches. My body is tired–I am standing, gesturing, emoting, explaining using my body all day. My energy sometimes deflates: the energetics of deep listening, the energy of discerning and assessing and reassessing and drawing boundaries, the energy of holding and creating space, the energy of knowing that everyone is looking at you both as an object of the gaze and with the expectation of your performance. Everyone is looking at you.
So I am “on” in the way that any performer is “on” when I teach. And I am also “on” in the way that a machine is “on.” They have pushed my “on” button. Maybe this isn’t the gentlest analogy in a piece of writing on how my body is longing for more softness during the summertime. But I think there can be, there is, something playful and even sensual about comparing the human being to a machine, an android, or about the interaction between the human and the android.
I’m thinking of an anime series I used to love when I was a teenager, Chobits, which was about a human boy who falls in love with an android girl. Chobits was playful and adorable and sweet, with a hint of the erotic and a touch of the philosophical–what does it mean to be human?; can “being human” be taught and learned?–and I adored it. I’m thinking of a music video I came across a few years ago, Tove Lo’s “No One Dies from Love,” which is a sapphic, erotic encounter between a woman and an android that ends in heartbreak. I’m thinking of my character Mira, who says that the objects we use as adaptive tools for the human body–whether for health, like Mira’s silicone feeding tube, or for the erotic, like the dildo she sometimes wears on a harness with her lovers–become part of the body and the body’s experience too. The android is turned on. The android runs on energy, on power. There is something performative, surreal, about the android. The android also needs to be turned off sometimes, to be plugged back into its power source before it can “go” again, to recharge.
Yes–there is also something sinister, something less than sweet and cute, about the human-as-android, or the human-as-machine. We humans are not actually machines. We cannot sustain a state of constant capitalistic demands to produce, to go-go-go, to always be on. We really do need to be off sometimes, to return to our power source, to rest and recharge.
Summertime is my time to turn off. I turn my dial to a much lower setting. I put my productive mind and body to “sleep”–I mean the way you put a computer to sleep, a twilight state in which it pauses certain functions to conserve energy, but can also be reawakened when called, with the touch of a finger. I plug myself back in to my source.
***
Summer is often written about as a busy time, a social time. There are lots of events, places to go–festivals, parties, dinners, farmers’ markets–and there are gatherings, people to see. People travel, emerge into the world, maybe see friends and loved ones they haven’t seen in a long time.
I don’t really want to do much of this during the summertime. I see a lot of people during the other seasons of the year. I talk a lot. I listen a lot, in a way that stretches my energy. There is a lot of interchange of energy. My body and heart need soothing after that. Summertime is my soothing time.
I don’t want to see many people. I want my circle to shrink and soften. I want to talk less. I do like to go places in summer, even to travel a bit, but I also want my orbit of daily travel to soften and exhale. I don’t want to have to be places at times. I do want to be outside, yes, of course I want to be outside, but I also want to retreat deeply and quietly into my cave. This makes me feel at odds sometimes with the energy of summer, which can feel very outwardly sexy and showy. I am sexy during summer, yes. I am wearing something very cute. But I’m not wearing it for anybody else and I don’t want, need, or ask for anyone to look at me. I’m tired of being looked at. I am not for you to look at. I am for me to feel. I am sexy only for me.
***
What do I crave and long for during the summer? What is “summertime softening” for me? What helps me rest, restore, repair, recharge? Where do I go and what do I do to plug back into source?
I make a lot of beautiful things. But this isn’t productivity. First I have to thank my dear friend and witchy BFF Kait Fowlie for giving a name and image to this feeling I have had for a long time about the things that I make. Kait told me once that she feels like her creations are like those macaroni art projects we used to make as children in school. They are lopsided. They are wonky. They are sticky to the touch with too much glue applied by inexpert, overexcited fingers. They shimmer with glitter. They make astonishing shapes, like rainbows or hearts. They are an offering from the guileless, open, and tender heart, directly from me to you. They are not polished or perfect. Their goal isn’t to persuade or impress, to part a fool from their money. Their goal is, like a sweet, eager puppy or kitty, to offer love and find their forever home, someplace they are accepted, someplace they are fed, someplace they can feel safe to curl up and take a nap.
These are the kinds of things I make during the summer. They take a long time. They seep slowly out of my heart. They are lovingly tended but not buffed to an artificial shine; they are bumpy and raw like a homegrown fruit. I hope people like them. But just as with the glitter macaroni project, I kind of don’t care if no one else likes them. I had so much fun making them! The process of shaping my macaroni into a heart, getting my fingers all gloopy with glue, and shaking glitter all over it was so fucking healing. I make a lot of things during other seasons for other people, for other people’s gaze. What I make during summer is for me. If you like it too, well, that’s the cherry on top.
I like long rituals during summertime. I have time for them; more of my long, luscious time is devoted to me, to what my heart needs. I do hour-long yoga and meditation sessions, ones that are juicy, stretchy, and deep. I like yoga nidra, yin yoga, body scan meditations during summertime. I do elaborate tarot and oracle rituals, just for me. I do special journaling, allowing myself to sink into some really crunchy writing prompts in my favorite books. I journal in bookstores and cafes, and in the park, letting my gaze wander, absorb things, receive inspiration and nourishment. I am receptive, I am porous. The generous earth pours things into me.
Summertime is for long walks. These walks are wanders and rambles. I have a lot of places to go at specific times during the rest of the year. In summer, I am not going anywhere in particular. I am just walking. Sometimes something catches my eye, mind, heart, body, memory, and I stop, linger, absorb, understand, receive. Sometimes it is only about the walk: the movement of breath, blood, bones on the earth that is moving too, both internally and externally, both on the surface and underneath. Sometimes it is the feeling of travel, of passing from one place to the next, seeing the landscape shift. Sometimes it is for the flowers. I am with the bright flowers in the summer: hot pink rose, tropical hibiscus, the orange lilies with deep red hearts or the soft buttery yellow ones with crimped edges, the fluff of periwinkle hydrangeas. Sometimes it is to take a quest to a new ice cream shop and try an adventurous new flavor. The cool, dripping ice cream is satisfying and perfect after the long walk.
Summertime is for being in the park. It’s for aimlessness, it’s for pleasure without purpose. It’s for letting my gaze rest. It’s for the whimsy, these past three summers now, of being with my girl, my woodland fairy, flitting through high grasses, catching her under the arms and scooping her up when I need to. My world shrinks to the universe of this small green space–stone bridge, still pond, bird feather, bee buzz, purple flower–in the summertime. My body has what it is longing for: my world has become small, has shrunk so that I can wrap my arms around it and embrace it whole, has softened. And of course my world has also expanded. I see that the universe is here, in this one small green park with this one person I love so much, who loves me too.
*What do you long for during summertime? What is your body seeking?
*Do you ever feel “at odds” with the energy of one of the seasons? What are your personal seasons?
*How does your world both soften and expand?
*What are you making that is healing for you, that is just for you?
*How do you refill the well / return to source / heal your energy / rest / repair / recharge? What’s on your list of things that soothe & restore you?
Happy summer.
Love,
Nikki
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Hey. I’m Mistress M / Nikki Ali. I’m a writer, writing guide, teacher, dancer, and creative activist based in Newark, New Jersey.
I am a person whose ancestors were enslaved people who helped build the structures of this country where I live. I stand with the lightworkers + those seeking the liberation of all peoples from oppression. I live + create most humbly on Mohican + Lenape territory, and I lovingly acknowledge the ancestors + elders, past and present, of the land on which we live.
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a gorgeous, healing piece of writing -- softening :) xxx