Slow Notes 03

July 2025 in review—and a few recommendations and prompts for you.

Rachel Schwartzmann

Jul 31, 2025

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👋 Notes on July

Every summer, I fall into one of two sensations: feeling everything or remembering everything.
For me, there seems to be a distinction: When I’m feeling, I’m present almost to a fault. Some days, I call it anxious. On better days, attentive.
But this season has blurred those boundaries. This season, the days have truly blurred into one.
For that reason, I’ve drafted this letter multiple times, only to realize that I’m simply not ready to write about what I actually want to.
I want to live with it for a little longer—really feel it before it slips into memory.
You’ll find there’s little coherence to this letter. It captures the essence of the season: messy, nostalgic, pulsing.
One draft centered on a word I haven’t been able to shake from my mind: spirit.
There have been hints of it everywhere: On a sunny, tree-lined street, where one red scooter and one green scooter sit next to another like old friends, evoking a jovial spirit. A few blocks over, hordes of elementary-school-aged campers screeching into the void, reigniting a sense of playfulness. A few hours later, a kind of calm takes hold as I take a reflective, golden hour walk.
Perhaps that’s also why I’ve been drawn to reading stories that quietly show a character’s unwavering spirit, even in the most heart-rending circumstances: a schoolteacher finding her way to desire in Clarie Lispector’s An Apprenticeship or The Book of Pleasures; a young woman carving out an unexpected home in Emily Hunt Kivel’s Dwelling; a narrator finding more questions than answers in the brutal world of Jacqueline Harpman’s I Who Have Never Known Men; another narrator blurring the edges between fiction and reality in Lara Mimosa Montes’ The Time of the Novel.

A passage from *The Time of the Novel* by Lara Mimosa Montes

The people in these stories teach me something, but they also remind me to maintain a spirited attention.
It’s difficult while burning under the July sun—and burning out from our ruthless world.
Still, earlier this week, I attended a pre-launch celebration for Madeline Cash’s forthcoming debut novel.
Each time I attempted to say goodbye, I was pulled into a new conversation, wanting nothing more than to linger in the brilliance enveloping the room. Thick sweat coated my skin, though for the first time in a long time, it wasn’t from anxiety, just the elements.
This event had absolutely nothing to do with me, but in the presence of peers, strangers, and new friends, I embodied a spirit I’ve fought hard to reclaim over the years: being in the world, committing myself to possibility just as much as the page.
A page from my journal: With Slowing, I was writing towards light—upward. With my novel, I want to plunge: not necessarily towards darkness but towards every other nerve ending that was once too fragile to be touched.
If I wrote about you, you’re remembered. If I wrote about you, you’re loved.
I recently told a loved one that I admit we’re not making enough memories; we're just going through the motions.
I read somewhere you’re not supposed to begin a story with a question, but there is no life without them.
A fleeting thought from my Notes app: I’d rather my work paid off a soul debt instead of an internet bill.
Imagine that you don’t have to keep going; instead, you simply want to, because you know that while exhaustion and uncertainty are an inevitable part of the story, writing your next chapter is worth it.