(on an adventure with my friend Bradley, Orange County, CA)

So far as I can remember, I’ve never written an ode to this season. I’ve never been its most ardent follower, its peppiest cheerleader, its Number One Fan. I mean, summer is great and all, but give me spring or autumn any day, with more moderate temperatures and those beautiful tones and colors. You know, colors that are more than just of the bright sun-shiny primary variety.

Yes, summer did often mean amzing things like camp when I was younger – and thus an escape from the small-town mean girls who made the other nine months of the year seem an eternity. Or, in high school, the odd jobs were certainly odd, but they were often an odd sort of fun too. And my birthday is in summer! But summer? As a my favorite season? I just can’t remember a time that my heart called out for it: Summer! You! Are! The! One?

I think there’s a reason I’ve lived in Southern California on and off for nearly five years and can count the number of times I’ve been to the beach on both hands.

But oh. Summer. This summer. Has been different.

Summer is about sunshine and good times, about endless days and ice cream, about friendship and warmth. Or it’s supposed to be, right? But when things are turbulent or sad, then summer is hot and hard and frustrating. The big difference is that this summer, there’s happiness. So much happiness.

Sure, there are problems too but they don’t seem so tough when you’re standing on a beach in Laguna, with your friend Bradley and his Mamiya, taking a photo of the setting sun glinting off the choppy ocean with your cellphone so you can send it to your true love who is in San Francisco and who will be here to visit you next week.

When you’re filled with sunshine and sand and ocean water, clutching cameras lent to you and given to you, watching the sky as it turns shades of hazy pastel you never knew were possible in red, white, & blue July. The churning waves a pale silvery aqua tinged with the last baby blues and violets of the sky, a nearly improbably metallic sheen, constantly heaving in an irregular rhythm. The sun showing its last rays of gold and yellow, then suddenly deep burnt orange, the legendary sky of California, setting off rocky bluffs with palm trees and an endless ocean that travels all the way to the other side of the world. And you try to remember every detail, every moment as best you can because you can’t capture any of this perfection  because you’ve already run out of film and your phone battery is dead and you didn’t bring a digital, and you laugh and laugh, your pants soaked by sudden waves and your hair full of salt and wind.

Summer. Is love.

(with Pablo, Albany, CA)

xoxo

Many years ago – okay, only eight but it feels like a decade – I lived in New York for a spell. It was a brief stop between a long sojourn in the Bay Area and “am I going to get into graduate school anywhere?” Which I did, as you may or may not know, and went off for a few years to one of my favorite cities: Washington, DC.

I had long wanted to live in Manhattan. New York! Center of the universe! Like half the planet, I’d become convinced that I absolutely had to move to New York in order to be happy and to find myself and to do all the important things one needs to do in life and so forth. While this may be true for some people – and really, I want to meet those people and stare at them in wonder and then dissect their brains when they are dead – for Leah in her mid-20s it was not at all the case. And anyway, as we all know, you can’t move somewhere in order to be happy. Being happy is a little more complicated than that.

But let me tell you one of the things I was most excited about when I moved to New York – one of the things I never stopped being excited about. In fact, you could go as far to say it’s something I’ve been excited about in every place I’ve ever lived or visited, city or otherwise: The little things.

I’m not a very good tourist. I don’t go to the right places, see all the important sights or sites, and do not ever make me take a guided tour. Please, for the love of all that is holy. No guided tours. I feel itchy and agitated just thinking about it.

When I go somewhere or move to a new place, the best thing to do in my estimation is go get coffee. Wherever the people who live there get coffee. And see how the people who live there do it. Last year I went to Seattle to visit friends and I’m quite certain that was one of the first things we did – and not because Seattle is known for coffee or because I hadn’t had any yet that day, although those things played a role.

So when I moved to New York, I was terrifically excited about this one little thing in particular: Getting a real New York cup of coffee. It wasn’t quite as prevalent as it once had been, given the rise of boutique coffee shops and espressos and lattes and all that. But you know what cup I’m talking about – the small cup, flat lid, usually carried by someone rushing off to catch the subway and who also has the newspaper folded just so under the other arm. Having that cup of coffee meant that person lived in a neighborhood, had a neighborhood coffee spot, knew exactly what to order and how to order it, and did it all without a hitch. Everything had a rhythm for them, was a part of their fabric of life, which is what created the real city, the city I wanted. If you marched into the joint and ordered the coffee wrong, not only would you disrupt the rapid flow of service and make people late, you’d clearly be marked as an outsider, a non-local, someone other than. A loose thread to be yanked. Who wants that.

Eventually I mastered the coffee – the ordering, the carrying, the rushing. I still can’t fold newspapers for the life of me.

It’s been a long time coming, but I finally bought this cup. It sits right next to me on my desk, way here over here on the west coast. And funny, I got it from an amazing store in Seattle, not New York. You should get one too. And if you do, call up and get some personal service from Emily. She’s about as sweet and friendly as they come. Unlike some of the people in line waiting for coffee in New York.

Go check out: Velocity

Need help deciding what to get? I can show you my wish list.

Wait, did I say wish list? I meant… oh hell, you know what I meant.