On Monday, New York City welcomed the kind of fresh weather that makes you feel like everything is happening but you’re missing it all. That itchy sensation, when you’re sure that a whole bunch of your 10th grade pals are planning a walk on the Brooklyn Heights promenade. BUT they refuse to tell you about it because they think you’ll judge them for taking ecstasy. All YOU do is hang out at home researching rabbit adoptions on petfinder.com and making vegan pigs-in-a-blanket with your mom.

Didn’t you feel that way when springtime came to high school?

I only ever felt like a real teenager once, at a summer program at Bennington College, which I attended with fellow Diva Joana Avillez. She studied painting and poetry while I veered in a radically different direction, choosing instead to pursue poetry and pottery. We spent a lot of time preparing our spoken-word work for assorted open-mic nights, lazing by the lake, modifying wifebeaters bought at the local big box store, beading bracelets (some spelled CUNT, others boasted early John Mayer lyrics) and loitering at the smoothie counter talkin’ trash. Most camps inspire a cultlike adoration (the major exceptions to this rule are concentration and refugee camps) and when I returned home I was so depressed I slapped my dog in the face for trying to snuggle me. This picture of Jo and me says a thousand words. At the time, we declared it “very Virgin Suicidesy.”

My heart-aching affinity for that girls-of-summer mythology also accounts for my love of Summer Girls by LFO

And Boys Of Summer (The Ataris version, which should totally be adapted into a feature film)

I was starving for a break from the satisfying but occasionally tedious experience of sound mixing TINY FURNITURE. Joana saved me from binge-eating soy pudding by sending links to 2 short stories that evoke the sticky/sexy/peachfuzz/endless potential/rape potential feeling of summer. One by John Updike and the other by Joyce Carol Oates, who Joana deftly noted is a “freak magnet.” Read them. I did! I love Wet Hot American Summer just as much as the next white person, but I need hefty and regular doses of unironic appreciation for summer camp and the humid teenage sex I never had! Taylor Swift is also helpful in this pursuit. Ke$ha isn’t as helpful, but you should follow her on twitter. She’s like if Jerri Blank was attractive and started a pop career. See the tweet below!

I can look forward to more warm weather because the time has come to head to Austin, TX to premiere TINY FURNITURE at SXSW. The HDCam layback has happened. There were some tech issues and I hyperventilated (that’s the medical term for sobbed) and producer Kyle Martin likened it to “watching a baby have a baby” but we got through. See? Kyle is holding the tape!

Made my dad handle it too, for good measure!

Thank you to all who indulged my anxiety and misplaced perfectionism (where was this fierce desire to do things right when I was taking academic classes? Now it’s finally appeared, but it just takes the form of second-guessing trained professionals at elite post-houses.) We leave Thursday morning. Excited, grateful, will spill the beans upon my return (and tweet my head off while there. So many movies and people to embrace!)

When I met you I said my name was Rich.
You look like a girl from Abercrombie & Fitch.

–Lena