It’s easy to get depressed in the summer. Many thoughts, dreams, wishes and no serious, achievable plan that would guarantee that at least some of them will come true. The feeling that you will miss another summer, which will be added to the long list of dusty and unremembered pasts, leaves an “ugly and sad” void that only a miracle will fill; let’s be honest, taking a week off in the summer isn’t the kind of decision that makes dreams come true!

When you don’t know how to finish, call a friend! So I did and inserted Vlasti, my favorite interlocutor, into this story up to the ear, out of a selfish desire to know how best to taste summer: as townspeople, as peasants or as nomads, is there any secret and healing alchemical cocktail that once swallowed, transforms you into the master of summer, like you’re a carefree child again, spending the holidays so charmingly that in the end you just don’t want to be locked in an album.

Authorities, I have summoned you here in your favorite coffee shop—I will not name its name for mutually acceptable reasons—to talk about summer: either we gossip about it and end up choosing winter as our favorite season, or come to the conclusion that the only wise thing for to leave us to her will. What does your instinct tell you?

Christie’s Powers:

My favorite season is, of course, summer. Winter always helped me grow: I could read more, study more, it’s like a period of solitude, introspection, as well as anxiety, depression, regret. Summer is full of potential, thirst, momentum. Summer is immersion in dreams, fantasies, fantasies. Summer is a time of reflection, winter is a time of reflection. Summer has a certain push, winter is a time when you strive to become better, in summer you become better, you show yourself.

Christi Vlasti:

My favorite season is still summer, and my favorite month is June because it is full of life, like a beardless young man, with promises and dreams that live as if they were yesterday. June does not yet encourage you to seek shade and indulge in laziness, on the contrary, it wants you to be full of energy until late at night, especially since June gives us the two longest days of the year and the shortest night.

At the beginning of summer, temptations are everywhere: parks, terraces, open-air shows, the end of the season in exhibition halls and theaters, on the sand of the beach, in gardens, on mountain and bike paths. Warm, but not the terrible heat of a furnace, but soothing, like a promise, and the light… the light is incredibly bright and inviting, whether it envelops you in a field, at dawn, on a mountaintop or on a cafe terrace.

The first half of July passes, and summer begins to dig deep into my enthusiasm: I cannot go out into the world without a straw hat and a water bottle in my backpack. I wake up at night to water the garden and lawn or mow the grass. My strong breakfast coffee fights with a cold beer for priority, and my second coffee of the day is left behind. I don’t want to mention what his stove means for a month in a car stuck in traffic.

I would skip midsummer for Assumption, which is one of my favorite holidays of the year, anytime. After August 15, summer becomes a fairy tale again, a time that I like, and until the double feast of the birth of the Mother of God, in September, it remains so and cradles me in Abraham’s bosom!

Christie’s Powers:

Yes, preferences for the summer months change over time. Interesting. I used to prefer July and August, the hot months, now June has become uplifting, and the end of August enters the zone of poetic nostalgia. August became contemplative and calm, he saw and lived a little more alone, July is more depressing, because he still works quite hard, but the mind flies away, he is already on vacation.

In the summer I spend many days in the country. There is a lot of work. Cherries, cherries, raspberries, cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, onions, peas, lavender are ripening… It is nice to be there, to witness the pretended and privileged beneficiary of fruits, with their fresh and bright taste, rich colors and smells that please you Obviously, to own a house outside the city requires effort, because nothing comes for free. The meadow must be taken care of, weeds must be uprooted, the vegetable garden must be dug and watered – “soap and water”, as they say – trees must be sprayed so that they are not attacked by mushrooms and insects, vines must be dug up, tied up, unruly shoots are cut off, then it sheds itself , so that diseases do not attack. In the summer in the country, it is a pleasure to try to restore nature, otherwise it is impossible. But what do you do if you don’t want to find joy in work?

Christie’s Powers:

My perennial problem that I can’t deal with: Being a city boy, I’m in a relationship Love hate with me and this inability to work on the little things that take time and skill for small but important stakes. The intensity of city life rubs off on me, and I notice it. I burn quickly, I need important things to give free rein to drive. I can’t bring myself to paint the fence, I’ve never done it, but I’m fascinated by the fence that goes right by the house. I really envy him. It’s a good envy, a form of respect and nostalgia for a talent lost over generations in my family. I can say, during psychoanalysis, that a person who works near the house has the least form of conflict in him, I think it is an act of love. Taking care of things is probably the most important thing.

Christi Vlasti:

Summer in the country, if you are not a full-fledged farmer, but a lost city dweller in search of peace, is the perfect time to be at one with nature: it is easy for you to get up early, because the light wakes you up from your bed, breakfast brings you table reds fresh from the vine and delicious fruits , which have not yet lost their juice, the smell of grass, stables, dust raised from the fields by threshers, and the sounds of the village running to do their morning chores before the heat sets in at noon.

Of course, I learned, and I even liked it, how to use a spade, sickle, vine cutter, when and how to water vegetables, why and when to spray them and what solution, when it is good to water. the meadow and when to mow the grass, when to pick the lavender flower and how to store it, what to do with the fruits that ripen one after the other and must be picked in time so as not to be lost.

Work in the country, in your garden is not easy and never ends, but it is pleasant and useful. At some point it becomes an end in itself, it’s part of well-being, it sets you up nicely for the other challenges of the day and strengthens you. If you do not exaggerate with exposure to the sun or with physical efforts not recommended even in youth, walks in the open air in summer, early afternoon and evening, educate and harden you.

Appetite comes during meals. The satisfaction of taking something, a thing out of your hands, has other consequences: it stimulates your creativity, sharpens your senses, increases your self-esteem. You become better, selfless and suddenly resourceful in the positive sense of the word. What does summer bring to the equation? It connects you with its extraordinary warmth and light, it changes your batteries!

Christie’s Powers:

For some reason, we are optimized for this way of life more than for the urban one – analytical, social and intensive, dense. Among the types of work-induced fatigue, that “offered” by manual labor has the best correlation with perceived usefulness. And she is full of vitality, which is a big plus in our time.

Christi Vlasti:

By chance, I found another argument why I want to spend the summer in nature, and in the winter I want to go somewhere and seek shelter in a house.

July 8, the press writes[1] – i.e. midsummer day in the Northern Hemisphere – 99% of the world’s population (about 7.9 billion people) can enjoy (if they want, if they know about it) sunlight at the same time, somewhere around 14:15, Bucharest time.

This is not a unique phenomenon: at various times during the 60 days between May 18 and July 17, this window turns and provides sunlight for all of humanity at the same time. I believe that there is no more suitable argument to support the idea of ​​”summer together = everything together”.

I like the city in the summer, when it’s easiest for me to discover it. I like to walk around Bucharest in the summer, stop for a beer when I feel thirsty, I like mornings in cafes, pedestrian boulevards on weekends, outdoor concerts, evening walks in the park… In the summer I understand better that life in the country is never enough for me. At the same time, in the city, this season seems poor, I always feel the need for more, better to say something different. Of course, there are people for whom nothing compares to their city and can’t wait for the vacation to end to return to the sweet summer home.

Christie’s Powers:

For me, summer in the city means falling into sweet anonymity. I can walk around the city, and the city is empty, lazy, almost deserted, but full of a hidden pulse. They have their charm in the morning before the heat. A good coffee near a park like Cişmigiul, when the city has not yet woken up and only supply companies deliver goods through smart but nice guys, and you can watch people work together with a constant smile. This is something comforting.

In the summer you have plans, you want to explore, you work on many projects, in each of them you can find your valence that wants to come to the surface. This is you, a person who wants to live and express himself. In winter, you have a long discussion with your negative sides or what you think is negative, maybe it is not.

In the summer I also love the night, with leisurely, winding walks without direction, when you end up exactly where you wanted to come without realizing it, with the smell of lime trees, with gardens from which you can hear people in a good place. mood and light-hearted laughter and they feel good, they are animated by that feeling of freedom that summer gives you.

I love walking around old neighborhoods with gorgeous architecture in the summer, and Bucharest is a gem in that department. It’s a form of contemplation where I go there in my mind – I think it’s a meeting of two worlds, I’m probably looking for my father, who would have been my age, and I wonder what he was like in his time, what he did. It is a form of homage, regret, nostalgia, the ultimate consideration of an era in which some spectacular things were created and which have a beauty that transcends time, the link being, paradoxically, aesthetics.

I stop when I come across the yard of a big old house overgrown with weeds, and my mind wanders and imagines what it was like when the family felt good here, protected, full of energy and harmony. It is like the return of “Home” from “Youth without old age and life without death”, it has a nostalgia for the time that flows incessantly, which goes in search of vitality; peak, goes to the past to look for vitality! – Read the entire article and comment on Contributors.ro