If there’s one thing a Ngāpuhi likes, it’s arguing a case. Unfortunately for everyone else, I’ve always got one.
With exam season looming, my attention has already wandered several weeks ahead. Right now, I’m dreaming about summer: long afternoons, baking in the sun, with nowhere particularly urgent to be, listening to 100% Ginuwine and 2000s pop on repeat. There is something about summer that makes life feel temporarily cinematic – the calendar finally loses all authority, and suddenly there’s enough time for all the things that have been sitting on the backburner. Maybe I’ll finally book that tennis lesson that’s been on my to-do list since moving to Dunedin, or devour the stack of books that have been waiting for a less chaotic week. Maybe it’ll look like road-trips to Central, getting absolutely smooched by the sun, and, hopefully, hovering over a new hobby or two. For now, though, I am (for the first time ever) less interested in accomplishing anything than I am in the fantasy of actually having the time to do it.
The Sweet Escape
To be fair, summer has always had an unfair advantage over the rest of the year. Winter, especially in Ōtepoti, is generally characterised by a multitude of deadlines, slightly gloomy mornings, and the dreaded suspicion that something is due. On the flipside, summer arrives with attitude and the audacity to suggest that everything might finally be easy. Last year, in pursuit of anything that isn’t easy, I made it my life’s mission to save up, ditch the Dunner Stunners and chase the snow in the Northern Hemisphere for six weeks.
This year, though, I’ve decided to make the sweet escape feel deliberate. Summer should feel less like the end of one year or the beginning of another, and more like the summers we grew up with: something with its own soundtrack, the vague belief that absolutely anything could happen before February, and an unnecessarily ambitious list of things to do. The kind of list that makes almost zero practical sense and therefore feels infinitely more thrilling. Places to go, things to eat, things to learn, things to wear, things to do purely because they sound fun. And if half of it never happens, so be it. The point is having something to look forward to. There is something sickly sweet about creating your own little world and then deciding, for a few months, to just live in it.
Pocketful of Sunshine
We spend most of the year trying to squeeze ourselves into schedules, routines and five-year plans. But perhaps it is not so outrageous to spend a few months being a little less efficient. Maybe the real luxury of the post-exam season is the reality of not having somewhere to be. The irony, of course, is that summer never actually lasts as long as you think it will. Between graduation, Christmas and New Year’s, moving flats and working over the summer, the whole thing can, and probably will, disappear in a heartbeat. Somehow, although the season feels endless in October, suddenly it’ll be January and you’ll be wondering where the fuck the time went. Which makes the fantasy of an endless summer all the more appealing, because we know perfectly well that if you blink, it’ll all be over.
That is what it should be, really. Not a reinvention (though it’s always a given), and certainly not another project to fill the productivity void. Personally, I want to enjoy the fact that it is temporary. I want a summer that feels slightly excessive in the way that they used to: long enough to forget what day it is, warm enough to stay outside too late, and full enough of possibility that even the stupid ideas sound worth trying.
The Rest is Still Unwritten
For once, I am not particularly interested in making the next chapter impressive. Because perhaps the nicest thing about looking ahead is knowing that nothing has happened yet. The summer is still sitting there, completely untouched, waiting to become whatever it becomes. And for now, isn’t it just nice to not know what lies ahead?
Long Live the Question
