july wrap up
July nights are short; soon after midnight, dawn comes. — Charlotte Brontë
Oh, July—the hottest month of the year, the month of reckoning, the return to Europe after three long years. In July I felt my face wet with tears as I left Belgrade once more, burned my scalp in the hot sun, and swam with a mouthful of salt, happy to be in this world and this body and this life. And I think I always wonder about the miracle of consciousness in July, because my mind is at ease and my days are as close to free as they get. Isn’t it a strange and happy miracle to exist, the ‘unbearable lightness of being’ (as Kundera would put it)? I’m not sure. Such existential questions and joys are only possible when one’s mind is involved with chemistry and physics in a tangential manner, not the focused study September promises. And the half-done summer is a tender, loveable thing, which offers the correct amount of relaxation and joy before the return to school, which I already anticipate. Of course school is stressful and exacting and senior year promises to be more of the same—but I love a challenge. However, let me not be too preoccupied with what lies ahead without paying respect to what’s behind.
I visited Spain this summer, and found Barcelona a beautiful, loud, joyful city. My most important memory of its beauty is that of the Cathedral of Barcelona, which has two notable aspects (in addition to being wholly gorgeous). First, part of its facade is being restored, and Samsung has taken the opportunity to put up a large ad, which reminds one rather unpleasantly of Joni Mitchell’s ‘Big Yellow Taxi’ (they paved paradise and put up a parking lot). Second, a room within the cathedral hosts a sign that declares it not for tourists, photos, or gawking, but prayer. In an age where we seek to document and hence commodify everything in our lives, in a city overrun by tourists, I found it quietly reassuring to find a holy place still dedicated to its original purpose. I did not enter (I am an Orthodox Christian, and the church is Roman Catholic in affiliation), merely ran the thick beads of my brojanica around my wrist and crossed myself, to pay respect, before I left. This was by far the most impactful part of my trip to Barcelona—my return to Serbia, as heartbreaking and healing as it was, has too much meaning to be summarized so neatly with an anecdote.
This is the seventh of my monthly wrap-up newsletters. My aim with this recurring section of nowhaunting is to describe and comment on the media I have engaged with during the month, give some personal updates on life and writing, then provide some thoughts on what lies ahead. Each month of the year feels precious and distinct to me, so the goal of this is to collate thoughts I would have had on my Tumblr into a cohesive article.
My music listening suffered this month; both my opportunity and inclination to listen to full albums were rare, and the desire did not line up with the few chances I possessed. It is possible that in the time between this writing and the clock striking twelve on the morning of August 1st I will have eked out one album, but knowing the irritating rigour of a Sunday with my family I sincerely doubt it. I listened to songs in passing—on recommendations from friends, pulled from episodes of television, streaming on the radio or my dad’s computer, jumbled lyrics I always forgot. I attended one open air jazz concert while I was in Belgrade, and while I’m sure the musicians were quite talented my focus was diverted by Proust’s In Search of Lost Time and my general distaste for jazz. The link to my usual playlist is as follows; while it features more songs that are not new to me than I typically like including it is nevertheless a good summary of what occupied my ears. I would like to salute Phoebe Bridgers and Florence Welch, both musicians whose discographies I know quite well, as excellent motivators for the physiotherapy which I am hoping will reduce my risk of needing back surgery.
I completed two full seasons of television in July, a far cry from the frenetic pace of June. However, I enjoyed both these seasons immensely, and would prefer to have a month of a few quality shows than a month of many mediocre ones. (Which is not to say that June was mediocre as far as television went, just that true excellence was sporadic. But I digress.) I watched the entire Mysterious Benedict Society adaptation on a plane (and reviewed it on my Substack, by the way), and found it to be a heartwarming take on the series, save for the massacre of S.Q. Pedalian, one of my favourite characters. I also finished the second season of The Crown, which I loved—it felt more expansive than the first season and permitted the talents of Claire Foy (Queen Elizabeth) and Matt Smith (Prince Philip) to shine more brightly, as well as providing a springboard for some personal research into British history. On the other hand, it cemented my dislike of the show’s Princess Margaret, who I found to become rather insufferable as the season progressed. I am excited to get to Princess Diana’s arc! I hope to finish the remaining two seasons before the fifth is released later this year, although I will say that I miss Claire Foy only a few episodes into season three. Olivia Colman, despite her talent, does not quite capture the same range.
This was my best reading month of the year. Not only did I read lengthy classics I enjoyed and felt challenged by, I also had the opportunity to return to childhood favourites on the eve of outgrowing the characters. I read the Harry Potter series for the first time when I was eight, and it’s quite frankly insane to me that my seventeenth birthday is mere days away. In addition, I returned to the world of the Mysterious Benedict Society with the 2019 sequel I discovered recently, and found its contents (although I admit my rating may have been buoyed by nostalgia) to be as engrossing in twelfth grade as they were in third. (Landslide has never seemed such a pertinent song as it does now.) While on vacation, encouraged by the apparent approval of my relatives, I worked my way through Les Misérables, Middlemarch, Beowulf, Within a Budding Grove, and The Bostonians, increasing my average page count to 320 and knocking several tomes off my reading list. I would like to focus attention on my favourite of these books, Les Misérables by Victor Hugo, which was an engrossing and beautiful read that accompanied me on a flight across the ocean, a train ride to Novi Sad, several bus routes rattling through Belgrade, and (perhaps most importantly) into the dim dark hours of the night in my grandparents’ apartment, unable to sleep. Only at 4am was I tempted to shut the book for need of sleep, and that is not an experience I’ve had since reading Harry Potter for the first time. (Even my beloved Ulysses only managed two o’clock.)
2022, or, as I like to call it, the year in which I constantly said I would like to watch as many movies as I used to and did nothing to make that a reality. I watched six films in July (one of which was Ali Wong’s delightful comedy special, but if Letterboxd counts it so do I), and of these found Early Summer to be by far the best. It’s a gorgeous, quiet piece which deals with the acceptance of self and truth. I wept once again on the plane between Belgrade and Barcelona, overcome by the final gorgeous scenes. I afforded it my second five-star rating of the year, and intend to write about it in more detail at a later point. On the contrary, Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (a film I have been excited to watch for months if not years now), was a mind-numbing nightmare, barely worthy of being called a film at all. I found it dreadfully boring, an overrated collection of well-shot scenes, and presumed it was beloved by insomniacs alone. The fact that this is a better-known title than anything from Ingmar Bergman’s filmography is a crime against cinema, if not me personally. My sole resolution for August is to rewatch something of his—Autumn Sonata is on the docket, as is the original Scenes From a Marriage miniseries.
Here is a personal update for the month, and unlike months of past, it’s filled with content. First, most of this month was taken up by my trip to Europe (Spain and Serbia, in case that wasn’t evident), which I enjoyed very much, and appreciated the privilege of, and miss so badly that when I look at the ring my grandmother gave me I tear up. Belgrade, despite my fading connection with the city, remains the sole place in the world where I feel truly at home, leaps and bounds beyond my hometown. Second, university dread is coiling in my stomach in the wake of several arguments and frantic research. Any advice that might be provided by readers of this newsletter would be greatly appreciated—I am still undecided on a major. Third, I wrote ten thousand words this month! The project is tentatively titled The Londoners and describes the lives of a pair of immigrants who weave around each other, from the perspective of recollection late in life. It’s a promising idea, although I must say that as of late I haven’t added much to it (those ten thousand words sprung from me over the course of a few days, after which I became engrossed in other matters). Fourth, I have begun practicing Russian on Duolingo, and maintain a streak through practice sessions held mostly at 23:50. I now know useful phrases such as ‘the circus is over there’ and ‘you are not my dad’, the latter of which I assume will enable me to read the entirety of The Karamazov Brothers in the original.
My ninth grade English teacher warned us never to end essays with ‘in conclusion’—it bores the reader, according to her—but this anecdote has announced the conclusion without resorting to beginning my sentence with those dreaded words, so I might have won. These words come to you from the frail creaking of this last July night, the dull sounds of crickets fading in. I shoot glances over my laptop screen with every sentence, dreading the door creaking open (while early night is an ideal time to write, it’s also rife with the possibility of an interruption which will end the flow of words). I lack, however, the ease and poise to conclude this article with the grace it deserves. Instead I will once again humbly thank the devoted readers who reach this paragraph, who find the babblings of a high school student worth their attention. It means a great deal to me that you consider my work worthy of your time. In conclusion I will share with you an oft-quoted poem, yet one which means nearly everything in the world, at least to me:
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
— ‘The Summer Day’, Mary Oliver