lost june
This June was characterized by a complete lack of intentional writing in my journal. I have nothing but fragments. June was distracted, out of my head, thinking about the easy things and avoiding thinking about the difficult ones. I have been moving through the world without much thought and remembering absolutely nothing. Months like this seem to happen maybe once a year, blurring a whole bunch of days together into something that feels less remarkable than it really is. I'm never sure what triggers the descent into this stupor, and usually the only thing that can pull me out of it is getting back to writing again. What follows here is a public display of my journal fragments guiding me back to myself.
[fragment: june 7]
I'll be honest and say that I'm undecided on my opinion about LA the city, but I loved LA the people. An impossible city to know but yet somehow containing so much warmth. So large and car-centric, I don't know how you could live here successfully. It's big and empty, like a sunny void. Closed and shuttered stores. No "town centre", everyone indoors in their own houses and cars. Something wrong/empty, like it's not supposed to look that way. There's a discomfort in how spread out it all is.
Leon and I went to L.A. It was my first time ever on the West coast of the US. I had long wanted to avoid traveling to California for a few extremely silly reasons. Number one being that [REDACTED FOR PRIVACY] was from there and I didn't want to do anything that would impact the sort of mythical status she occupied in my brain. I didn't want to make her more human. She was young and golden in my memory, smiling at me on the sunniest beach in the world. By going to her home state it felt like I was unlocking information about her without her consent. I didn't want to know California because I didn't want to have any more clues about her background, the life she so desperately ran from.
Number two was that I feared a personal schism of sorts. LA was full of people like me in a way that most of Canada really is not. I was concerned that spending time in LA would make me crave a new reality I'd never had before. That it would make me mourn a sort of life that I'd never had and cause me to rethink a lot of aspects of my identity.
Both these reasons are of course deeply foolish. It was time to go. J was graduating from his master's program and throwing a big party and so of course we headed South to celebrate.
We did very few touristy type things in LA, other than our frequent visits to In-N-Out. My visit was characterized by people and not by geography. I was delighted to see a new side of Leon - looking more relaxed than I had ever seen him back home, and filled with a really infectious sense of joy. I was extremely grateful for his willingness to show me around town - I would have been completely in shambles without him. In tour guide mode, Leon showed me a few sides of LA, from los callejones to Santa Monica Pier. Meeting J for the first time was also so delightful. He exudes warmth and I was honoured to be invited to what was truly the party of the century (you know it's good when the LAPD has to shut it down). There are lessons from LA I will be taking back home, all of them concerning family, dancing, and joy. In following the theme of lost june, I wish I had film photos to show you here, but I haven't gotten anything developed yet. Another post on LA likely incoming soon.
[fragment: june 2]
Chantal Akerman says in her memoir "Love makes you hang around." Before she even knew what love was, she was hanging around. Inconvenience is part of love. Am I such a sap as Akerman? "Yes, of course." is the answer - but you knew this. The full quote from the book: "As for me, I always hung around in the street after school because of love. Love makes you hang around. I used to walk a girl a couple of years above me to the Gare du Luxembourg. We would talk for a long time, she would miss one train, sometimes two, to talk to me for longer, even when it was raining. I can't remember what we talked about. […] She always ended up getting on a train and I would always return home. I didn't know what love was at the time. But that was surely it."
Even when I don't feel present I'm still hanging around. Kind of a chronic hanging around girl. Yes, this is a way that I love.
[fragment: june 21]
Where has the month gone? I couldn't tell you what has happened, but things have been good.
Have they been? In July as I write this, I hope that they were, but I can't remember.
[fragment: undated]
We had a 9 course meal with M in the two days before he moved back to Quebec. It was M's favourite meal of all time. I thought the mussels were good, I'd rank that in my top 5 of all dishes I've ever eaten in my whole life. I watched them play catch in the park after. In the way that summer is always melancholic of course the weather is beautiful even though a friend is leaving town forever.
I have been spending a lot of time lying down on beaches and in parks and looking at people, strangers and friends. Spending so much time horizontal has probably also made June more passive than active. I am not the one running these days, I am sitting and waiting for a situation to happen. I am waiting for the sun to set, I am waiting for something new to happen.
[fragment: june 27]
I absolutely have to call my mom today. I am trying to think about all the reasons why I would go so long without writing and mainly it's when I get this passive apathy about me - like I'm just existing from day to day and I don't have the energy to do anything.
In the same way that lost months are a product of my lack of writing, they are also a product of me not calling my mom. I need to stay grounded and my mother reminds me who I am. Her advice is good, but the longer I am away from her the longer I wonder if her advice is accurate. She no longer has a perfect mental portrait of my life, despite all I tell her. I start to fear that her advice doesn't capture the nuances I wish it did. I am seeing her soon in person and this will be a more effective way to be pulled out my June headspace.
[undated]
Z says this is good for me. Everything to teach me a lesson, everything in its right place. I am glad to to see her again and glad to be writing again. I don't know myself without writing myself down.
Z came to Vancouver to see me for four days and I loved having her here. We were both working a few days and it rained and I admit to having much lower energy than I wish I had had because of the entire lost June thing. I credit her visit with getting me back to a more stable place.
[fragment: june 30]
all things consumed in june and mixed together. holding on to as much as possible. Films: Jackass: Best and Last (2026, dir. Jeff Tremaine), Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997, dir. Jay Roach), Frisk (1995, dir. Todd Verow), Lurker (2025, dir. Alex Russell), My Dinner with Andre (1981, dir. Louis Malle), The Social Network (2010, dir. David Fincher), The Serpent's Skin (2025, dir. Alice Maio Mackay), My Mother Laughs by Chantal Akerman, Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (And The Next) by Dean Spade, Enemy Feminisms: TERFs, Policewomen, and Girlbosses Against Liberation by Sophie Lewis
With any luck at all, I've awoken for July. The blogging has helped.
yours,
s