summers over interlude

only one or two more pages left

hi again. at the time of writing this, summer is ending in three days. by the time that this post comes out, i would have been moved into my apartment hopefully and will probably be out with friends. the past week has been hectic, lots of shopping and planning and anticipating, all three which i am quite bad at and don’t enjoy doing. this was easily the longest summer of my life. i don’t even really know if i’ve fully processed it, but all i know is that i never want a transitory period of my life to go this way ever again., but on the other hand, i’m sad to see it go. i wish i got to spend more time with my parents and my sister all in the house together, as that only ended up happening for three-ish weeks. as excited as i am to get back to school, i can’t help but mourn this time in my life though. it will never be this way again, and in a lot of ways, i’ll never have a summer like this one for the rest of my life. this is me mourning that.

as much as i don’t like thinking of my life in terms of “chapters”, i feel like compartmentalizing my life in any way feels like a senseless needless complication that i would be injecting into my psyche in an effort to rationalize the ever-changing and constantly shifting circumstances and settings i (and will continue to) find myself in, closing this chapter feels scary. i feel like i had to come to terms with a lot of changes in a short amount of time, and my way of coping with that was to prepare for the next few months ahead of me, and i just feel like it’s been so long since i’ve truly felt present. that is one aspect of this summer i am ecstatic about shedding away.

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during the school year, i hardly had the time to watch movies or tv shows that i liked. this summer, i read a few books and binged a few tv shows and watched more movies than i probably will get to do again for the rest of the year. to pay my dues, i wanted to include some of my favorites via a rapid-fire media review.

less by andrew sean greer

such a solid solid book. a gay white middle-aged man whose ex-partner of 15 years is getting married, and he can’t help but travel the world from country to country on a book tour to escape attending the wedding. it’s told from such a unique and warm perspective, and one that i feel like everyone will be able to see themselves in, regardless of their proximity to the identity of being a gay white middle-aged man. i simply love things about love. solid 4/5

the will to change by bell hooks

i’m going to count this as a double-feature review alongside “all about love”, since i’m currently reading that but am taking an indefinite hiatus until i’m like many to several years older than i currently am to pick it back up. this one is fucking genius. i don’t know how she does it. it def feels more like it is for women than it is for men. if you have brothers, friends, uncles, a father who you wish to understand more (and they are worth the time and effort that it takes to understand them), then this is a strong recommend. there are many important things in the world, but empathy is by far the most important. 4.5/5.

the idiot by elif batuman

i simply cannot believe that it was still summer when i finished this. too many things to say but i’ll keep it short. i started this in october and then quickly decided to read through it episodically, ensuring that i was reading up the points in selin’s college freshman year that lined up exactly with mine. the book finishes with her summer break. this 9 month ordeal was and will always be important to me. in unskilled hands, a book as mundane and plotless as this one could have been so dry and annoying and boring, but i couldn’t help but be enamored with selin’s life. her relationships with the eclectic ensemble of people around her, her miniscule observations of everything and anything, her constant waves of confusion and curiosity and conclusions ahhhhhhhhhh too good. i get why a lot of people don’t enjoy batuman’s style, but for me her pulitzer prize is incredibly deserved and it really means more than people give her credit for. as if it doesn’t read in everything i do and write about, i find this book incredibly influential lol. 5/5 easy.

the bear

i haven’t finished season 2, but this has been an incredibly the bear summer. when my hometown friends were here for the week we finished all of season 1. i’ve rewatched some episodes with friends and family around 5 times. the soundtrack is very chicago and so is the overall vibe of the show, but sometimes it feels rly goofy and doesn’t feel like chicago at all. every character is so pretty inside and out and it is so fun to see them revel in their respective dreams and aspirations. also i’m being carmy for halloween. fun/5.

honorable mentions are the queer season of Are You the One, Afire by Christian Petzold, and Kafka by the Shore. thank you summer for giving me the time to enjoy all of these things, they came at the right time :). this concludes the rapid-fire media review.

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anyways, i am excited for a lot of things and really scared of a lot of things. to cook things with my friends, to see how my relationships develop with the people i now live with, splitting grocery bills and buying things for eachother, etc etc etc. i know that this semester is going to feel a lot lonelier than past ones have felt, and i know that my plan of keeping myself busy 24/7 to combat that loneliness isn’t going to go the way that i want, but i feel ready. i feel ready to wake up early on days that i didn’t get to sleep. i feel ready to let my moods come and go. i feel ready to experience all of the anxiety that i know i will experience. i feel ready to feel lonely again, feel in general too. i feel ready fail (minorly) and succeed (majorly). i feel ready to do things i don’t want in order to pursue things i can’t live without. i feel. good :). OH also i got a remote research position at a college in Israel for computational archaeology. i hope i handle that okay.

the last thing i wanted to address is that with these very hectic next few months, i know that my substack writing habits will change. in all honesty, i’m kind of ready to sort of just live every moment without having to process it later (or sometimes during) like how i’ve been doing this summer. i won’t have the time to be pondering everything the way i’ve been doing and i really don’t want to have the time to ponder anymore. but that doesn’t mean i’m going to stop writing. i kind of feel like think pieces and essays and short form fiction pieces are the move right now…………. we’ll see. granted i don’t think this is the death of the boyblog, but perhaps a bit of soft “putting to bed”, and simply allowing it to wake up on occasion if the time calls for it. either way, thank you for reading. these have been a lot of fun. i’m excited to see where things go from here. summers over interlude by drake.

best,

kavin