The World's Longest Lightbeam
The art of made up parties
Last June the world was in a strange place. By the first day of summer, I was feeling a little weary despite returning to my apartment a couple of weeks prior. I could feel how familiar everything felt, nearly identical to the summer before. The air was the same, smelled the same, the humid breeze, the sweat of our brow, I recognized it perfectly. I had an awareness of the trick, however. Everything was in fact not the same, it resembled nothing of what I knew about life before covid. We couldn’t do the things we needed to do, or even the things we didn’t want to do. We couldn’t go to the beach couldn’t even go to work. A single relic to our old lives, one easily transferred over from the time before remained. My sister’s annual summer solstice party.
For five years in groups and in small clumps, my friends have gathered at the request of my sister to celebrate the summer solstice. We’d stop by restaurants in the late afternoon and drink wine, we’d eat big courses and appetizers before, in a tipsy and happy stride, we meander over to the west side highway. The light was always vibrant by the piers as we watched it sink lower behind New Jersey. Even if we couldn’t do that in 2020 my sister threw the party anyways. I think we all needed to see each other, to reach our hands out and touch each other. After three months of being apart, it would have been a party just to hear each other’s voices disappearing above us in a park somewhere along the west side. That year we met in Rockefeller park. I know it didn’t happen this way but this is how I remember it. There was one long pause the city hushed just for us and our reunion. We sat down in a secluded part of the grass, six feet from others, but at the time six feet felt like a hug. Just to see other people again was a kind of embrace. We looked around the circle. We were all really there. Within arms reach. We smiled within this pause to take it in before the sound returned to the city like a wave. The party began. We danced to ABBA. We sang, wine poured all over my face, we stood on benches, we walked through the winding unpredictable roads of the financial district, and we laughed.
Despite the unusual circumstances, the party felt like any other year because the summer solstice is adept to change. It is dictated only by our lone star and the 23.5° tilt of Earth. There are no special ingredients or concrete rules we live by. We’ve found a tradition in making up an excuse to throw a party.
This year you’re invited to join our tradition.
The spirit of the solstice party is about decisions. My mom says often it’s never too late to turn your day around. She means it’s never too late to decide to have a different day than the one you’re having. To treat ourselves to a party is saying even if this year, this age, this week, this month sucked this moment I am deciding I deserve to feel joy, for no reason and at no expense of my own. I don’t need any reason to be happy besides deciding I want to be. To decide, however, is so closely linked with our desire and wants it’s often surprisingly tricky to figure ourselves out. Sometimes we believe we shouldn’t want the things we so clearly want because we’ve made rules and stories about what it means to have. We recognize the solstice by recognizing ourselves. By the practice of delivering on our wants, we’ve become more capable of recognizing what we need.
Some years we’ve run along Connecticut boardwalks to watch trains fly towards manhattan with ice cream cake. We’ve made a salad and tanned on the roof another time. Sometimes our celebration was full blast listening to Rhianna’s song higher as we sped over a bridge with all the windows down. We’ve bought dresses out of our price range. We’ve dressed up because we’ve always wanted some special occasion to dress fancy, to dress chic. We’ve bought wine twice the price of our normal bottle. Sometimes we get three-course meals we don’t share with anyone. No matter what the party entails I feel so profoundly fulfilled by its arrival. The solstice has no budget. It’s all the things we’ve always wanted to enjoy without the fuss of being 20 something with no money. Every other excursion of our life is too carefully budgeted. Let’s pretend we have too much money or even just enough. What if we enjoyed today because we decided today was meant to be enjoyed?
It doesn’t feel bad to do all this because we made up some reason why we should. It is the longest day of the year, after all. We’ve been stuck inside and today is the first day of summer, we should rejoice! The solstice isn’t a celebration of summer, though. The solstice is an admission we are excited. We want things. We want to dress up in our nice outfits and had been longing for a party until eventually, we said what if we had one? It also recognizes the end is simultaneously the beginning. The days are already getting shorter and we are getting older and our time together is brief, often too brief and to cross paths with you is cause for celebration enough. You invite your closest friends to a party and each year new and different people show up. Some people come every year. Some don’t come back. In one instant the people you believe will live in New York forever vanish to other places and you are left in charge to miss them. This is a beautiful example and recognition of our life. It’s happening. I have a choice in how I enjoy it.
The reason I’m inviting you to join is because it’s both so simple and so impactful to do this one thing for yourself a year. I’m sure things have not been easy. The days are long and it’s hard to be a person in the world. Even if you don’t celebrate the same day, observe the same traditions I want you to have just one day for you. We’ve lost enough this past year. I think we deserve the recognition. If not to celebrate nothing, let’s celebrate everything. Life goes by quickly. On June 19th I’m celebrating. I have this desire to make a heart shape cake. I’ve needed an excuse to buy some vintage glassware and thrift shop plates. I also have a beautiful blue silk dress I bought for graduation because I discovered I had to take summer classes. Solstice I’m celebrating my half graduation, celebrating getting screwed over by my advisor, celebrating 6 years of hating college but graduating anyway. Make a list of the things you did or didn’t do and join me with store-bought cake or a giant cut-up watermelon with friends. We don’t judge. We’re gonna have a party.
Even if it’s not the solstice it’s the idea that counts. This feeling of being authentic to ourselves is profound and perhaps the one job we have while we’re here. We all want something for ourselves. The entire day, even before the celebration starts, there’s a rose tint to our life. Even our salads, our car rides, appear to us as cinematic.
When June hits I coast on the forgotten promises of summer, its sticky seats its bad hair days. There is, however, a strange knowing that overcomes me as the light turns to a deeper orange during the party. I feel a little melancholy. For a couple of days around this time, the sun will ultimately be in the sky just as long as it will be on the solstice. Yet with this knowledge is the recognition that this is the longest day and though summer is just beginning its light source is ending, falling, dissolving behind cities beyond the horizon. For a moment I get a fear of this perspective. How can summer almost be over? Until eventually I recall how from the other vantage point I see life is just beginning. The trees have just gotten their leaves back, the parks their patrons, and the warmth seeps in, the comfort, the security of feeling like you have a lifetime to mosey through. There is so much beauty to celebrate which we often forget to show our thanks for. I enjoy the duality and the mid-point that is the reality, both good and bad. The longest day of the year marking too the beginning of shorter days to follow. I take a look at that orange light and do what there is to be done. I catch it while I can.
Some pals you want to appreciate and be appreciated by
A big cake, a cake you know you won’t finish
A playlist of your favorite dance songs and dance songs only
Mismatch dishes and glasses (second hand is the best but all cheap dishes are welcome)
Over-the-top accessories, shoes, jewelry, and makeup. Things a little too out there for casual settings but you’ve always wanted to wear anyway.
A shirt unbuttoned low, too low, like leaving the beach at sundown low
At least one camera that isn’t an iPhone for high-quality memories or physical film to hang up later.
A list of things you’re celebrating (ex. Nothing, everything, my birthday from 6 months ago that I lost to covid and cold weather, finishing a paper for class even though you didn’t want to, or even a really good cup of tea.)
Something light and summery to munch on while you dance (salad, pasta, chips, salsa, fruit)
One game you probably will forget to play but brought anyway particularly a deck of cards for which everyone has one game they might want to play but are too drunk to explain the rules.
A bouquet of flowers, maybe two, or three for centerpieces and photo props
Candles so it seems adult and mature but really because of mosquitos.
A picnic blanket for when we transition towards grassier planes
A refreshing drink to cheers to everything we’re celebrating (sparkling lemonade, champagne, wine, or rose perhaps)
Silk anything
Not everyone is gone, even if at times it feels they are. They’re here, aren’t they, in my heart. Even if they choose never to return alone. May 24th, 2021 10:29 AM
Rarely do I take the G train but I know it’s different than it was. Even so, I made a declaration of its mediocrity aware that my view was outdated, revealing I still think of my rides to you as yesterday. June 1st, 2021 2:39 PM
What’s something you deserve to give recognition to yourself for?
What’s something you desire that you feel guilty about?
I always associate June with movement. The moment you graduate people start moving. In high school, my dearest friends for the most part scattered with their mom and dad to other states and I felt betrayed. Couldn’t their parents see how much we loved each other? I turned 24 this year and since turning 22 seven of my friends have moved out of New York City. It always surprises me. The list of places I want to live is 1. New York 2. Anywhere else. But of course, that’s the nature of life and cities and friends. When the time comes my friends spill their secret, shattering the illusion I had where we all wanted to live in this city forever, I let them go. My desire for them to stay is more readily marked by my desire they go where they need to go. Desire would be a good unofficial theme for June. I miss those cross country, out of state, jump ship, friends every day. But you hear how good they are missing doesn’t matter as much as love. When June hits part of the solstice, part of the culture, is taking a look at the guest list. Whether you throw a party or not I recommend one long gaze at who you might invite, who might not be able to come next year, who would have been here were it just a year before. June is a spectacular time for this. The heat breaks before the sun sets and there’s a small window of time to see these friends in the clarity of that glow. It’s a good time to say thanks, to say I love you, even if I know you’re looking to go
That’s all this month! If you enjoyed the little conversation we had let me know! Save +share your favorite parts and tag @chloeinletters
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Here’s to Starbucks Fridays, the things we want, the friends we have, and Earth’s spectacular tilt
Love always,
Chloé
Ps. Tomorrow my paid newsletter comes out with exclusive content on the theme of Solstice. for just 5$ feel free to join me. If not no worries, we’ll still see each other soon!
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It simply flowed with color and warmth.