Thus begins the time of year where greenery comes into bloom again. I can already see this in my houseplants, who have begun to raise themselves by leaps and bounds. My ficus bonsai had lost much of its leaves over the winter and I had worries that I had done something to agitate it. But slowly, the leaves are coming back once more. The cycle turns and turns once more.
I recently attended a screening of short films by the San Francisco-based Sandra Davis. The first three were a trilogy, filmed in the early 1990s while Davis as away in southern France with friends. Au sud took in the color of homey interiors and the ocean while Sarah Vaughan played on the soundtrack. A la campagne Khan-Tan-Su and Une fois habitée are much more interested in different settings of France, almost feeling like I was watching a home-video travelogue of Davis’. Vaughan and Chet Baker made appearances in these soundtracks.
The timing felt just right to see this trilogy. The locations filmed all felt soaked in sun, and when the occasional person appeared, they were often sunbathing or swimming. Davis often employs the rippling of water throughout as well, only adding to the feelings of warmth and tropicalia.
I’m finding myself all too eager to jump into summer temperatures. Today at the grocery store, I picked up a box of sparkling water with a blood-orange-lemonade flavor, ostensibly to evoke the taste of the flavors of a San Pellegrino drink. It’s hard to think of a drink more evocative in my mind of summer than the San Pellegrino blood orange drink. It’s the type of drink you crack open at loungey back-patio parties as you sit around and talk about one another’s kids, the type you wouldn’t buy yourself due to the price but all too happy to enjoy one now that it’s been offered to you for free.
This sparkling water, meanwhile, does not have sugar like the San Pellegrino does. It also includes lemonade as a key flavor, which maybe enhances the taste a little due to having said lack of sugar. It’s perfectly good seltzer, from the generally reliable brand Polar. I don’t think it totally replaces the San Pellegrino flavor, though. When drinking the San Pellegrino, the blood orange flavor is strikingly intense. It’s not the type of drink where you’d chug it in one go, it has to be sipped and savored.
I have a lot of projects this summer. I don’t know if I’ll get many of them done. But May represents a certain optimism, a hopefulness about what the summer will bring. From a macro, worldly perspective, probably not much good. On a wholly personal level, though, I’m hoping that there might be something there.
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