The Restlessness of June

 

What is it about June that induces a feeling of restlessness? It seems I was in a similar frame of mind two years ago in June when I wrote this post. 

Last year, in early June, I was in Scotland, returning home to a late start with my balcony pots of flowers, and ready to settle into familiar routines and comforts. This year, my pots were out on the balcony before the May long weekend, but routines are not what is on my mind. Lately, I’ve been a butterfly, socially and otherwise. I have a high pile of books on my nightstand (six is a lot to be reading simultaneously, even for me) and I flit from one to the other, like a bee in a field of flowers. I seem unable to stick a landing. In my morning journal, I manage only a page or two, sometimes stopping mid-paragraph to stare out the window.

What is it about June, the month where the shift to full-on summer and outdoor living beckons. Am I standing on the threshold, a buffet of options in front of me, unable to fathom if I’m making choices because I really want to, or because the season somehow demands that I change gears?

I did manage to finish an audio book – THE DUTCH HOUSE, by Ann Patchett. I’d highly recommend it, but, if you’re a Patchett fan (as I claim to be), you likely read it years ago, and don’t need a review from me.

I’ve attended gatherings with family and friends in backyards, wineries, art galleries, pubs and city patios (the social butterfly thing). All this mingling and mixing is so not me, perhaps contributing to my inability to read only one book through to the end, or write in more than twenty-minute sprints.

My restlessness is in the mind and spirit, maybe the body too. It might be the longing to travel again, to set off on a new adventure, or it may be something else entirely.

In my current frame of mind, all I can offer you in this post are snippets:

·       At one gathering, the conversation turned to necks. No matter one’s age, no matter the depth of discussion on other topics, our outward appearance still matters to us women, and we’re okay with admitting it. We can denounce the pressure from a society obsessed with youthful beauty, but we cannot deny that, despite our focus on being healthy, resilient, engaged in interests that feed our creativity and sense of purpose, we never lose that desire to look in the mirror and like what we see. And still there’s that critical eye, evaluating lines and wrinkles. It is so ingrained in us, part of being a woman. It never goes away.

And yet, there IS a shift in our perspectives, and we know it, a shift that comes with having lived, and not to realize this and be aware of it, is not to have benefitted from the gifts of aging. No longer are we going to the gym to get a ‘beach body’ (that odious phrase and impossible aspiration). We’re in the gym as an investment in our future bodies, to keep them strong, to keep living actively and independently. But that neck thing? Nora Ephron wasn’t the only one to feel bad about it.

·       On another patio we talked about poetry. All three of us around the table grew up in a time when we had to learn to recite poetry by heart. All three of us could quote lines we remembered from our youth:

“Water, water, everywhere, Nor any drop to drink” – Coleridge.

“The world is too much with us; late and soon” – Wordsworth. 

“Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light;
The year is dying in the night;” – Tennyson

“Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light” – Dylan Thomas.

Was there any merit in learning to recite poetry? We concluded, yes, because sometimes there’s comfort and delight in being able to rhyme off a line that bubbles up to the surface, that fits the situation exactly, in words you could not have strung together yourself. 

What is it about June that triggers these sensations of restlessness, that feeling of being beckoned to head out into the yonder, that feeling of standing on a threshold, straddling different worlds, unable to settle.

All In June - by William H. Davies

A week ago I had a fire
To warm my feet, my hands and face;
Cold winds, that never make a friend,
Crept in and out of every place.

Today the fields are rich in grass,
And buttercups in thousands grow;
I'll show the world where I have been—
With gold-dust seen on either shoe.

Till to my garden back I come,
Where bumble-bees for hours and hours
Sit on their soft, fat, velvet bums,
To wriggle out of hollow flowers.