Hot
Milton tried to make it into an epic soap opera, Dante tried to MapQuest the place, but it was all unnecessary, for we know what it is...utterly static and unrelentingly hot...hell. The condition currently applying to Menlo Park, California. Hell. As in, before it freezes over. Or hot as. Or go to. You name it, outside we are on location with the docudrama Hellfire. The temperature, if one can call it that, has soared into the 90s. Note that only in clichéd rhetoric do temperatures soar. In reality, they intensify, gaining evil mass like Rush Limbaugh. Increasingly nasty. And draining the quadriplegic soul down to its minimum reserves.
And we're not talking fluid. I'm not sure what we are talking. What happens when I get overheated, well, it shouldn't happen to a dog. Even a mad dog, of the sort Noel Coward likened to Englishmen. Never mind. And that is the problem, once it starts getting hot I no longer have one. The mind, that is. It is gone, Gone With the Wind, of which there is none. That is the other problem. The Bay Area was designed for a sort of automated cooling, a Pacific Ocean-based technology that reliably works most of the time, but not all the time. It is, in short, the weather equivalent of Microsoft Windows. Pretty good, not completely reliable, and we're stuck with it. So fuck you.
Of course, one cannot avoid venturing out. Definitely a mistake when the Devils Breath is blowing from the northeast, but there seems to be little choice. Stay inside and introspect all day? Hardly. Yet what's out there is not encouraging. One step outside the door, actually four steps, down to where the concrete surrounding my apartment has begun to radiate, and you'll see what I mean. No, you probably won't. That's because there are excellent odds that you can sweat. No sweat, people say. They say it, thinking of perspiration as an intermittent phenomenon, something associated with exertion or living in Phoenix. But in my case, no sweat is a constant. Little sympathetic nerve damage, no sweat. No sweat forever. Well, a little, just not enough.
That's why the baking asphalt reduces me to a primordial state. Not Alabama, but very low on the evolutionary scale. In fact, if the heat keeps up, I have every reason to believe I will grow a few scales. Their evolutionary function is well established, and the quadriplegic species has not yet developed effective defenses. Scales would be good.
They weren't the ones my mother had in mind, of course. Those were the ones I was supposed to practice on the baby grand piano she had purchased with my Musical Career in mind. Unwisely, I will admit this, something in me balked at the notion of piano lessons. It was bad enough that I didn't know how to throw a baseball, in fact, barely knew the rules of the game. On top of this deficiency, I was supposed to bang away at the baby grand. Fuck it, I decided. Of course, my mother persevered. This tug of war went on long enough for the piano itself to become involved.
The hot winds blowing up from Palm Springs fought their way under closed doors, through window cracks, and went to work on the piano. Someone claimed it was out of tune. This certainly wasn't me. I mentally abandoned the thing early on. Well not quite, for a while I did practice this and that, and while piano scales are not exactly music to the ears, what was happening to the desiccating piano, manufactured somewhere on the East Coast, well, it was what one would imagine. Straight from hell. At first, my mother kept calling in a tuner. Perfectly sensible, of course, and this guy would sprawl beneath the piano, then stand over it, flicking a tuning fork, staring at the piano strings as though possessed. I stared with him. Actually, it was quite interesting what was under the lid. When the piano tuner was present, I had an opportunity to twang away at these wires, study the felt hammers. When the tuner went away, the bad sounds actually worsened. By the time of his return, something had actually cracked. The sounding board, I think, if there is such a thing beyond the metaphorical. Anyway, something wooden simply could not take the Upper Sonoran breath of hell known as the summer wind. Not being yet spinal-cord-injured, I did not even notice the heat. Except for the piano. The thing was clearly on its way out the door, and I could not have cared less.
These days, I can't help thinking of my friends Joe and Laurel in Sacramento. Yes, their home is thoroughly air-conditioned, I have no doubt. But on a day like this, they must be at one of the lowest levels of hell, the place where the real Badass types go. The sidewalks turn into a stirfry. Patio furniture glows red. A walk to, say, pick up the paper on the radiant driveway plunges one into a human shake and bake. Okay, so that's Sacramento, but I have to admit that's where I met Marlou. Actually, I met her twice. The first time in November apparently did not have sufficiently adverse conditions underlying it. So it took a second time, a summer visit, which forced both of us into the backyard swimming pool. The cooling water everywhere. Some of it running off Marlou's breasts. Time passing. And, what the heck, maybe we should try a date.
Proving that heat has a redeeming purpose. It cooks our asses. Cooks our brains. Cooks us down into something along the lines of a human fricassee. More basic, sometimes erotic. Making everything unpredictable, out of the quadriplegic's control, what little control there is. Chill out, they say. Be cool, they used to say. That's a hell of a way to...meet someone, it could be said. Yet without the heat, without the day's focus drawn to the body and its needs, where would I be today? No sense in speculating, of course. I am having enough trouble dealing with the next few minutes. Jane has promised that the fog is going to roll into night. 'The fog' being that semi-reliable coolant Bay Area residents count on, or think they can count on. Where is it? What if I go outside, where it is reliably hotter, look up the street toward the Coastal Range and see, or do not see, the stuff creeping in on little cat's feet? Better not. That's why God invented the Internet. The Weather Channel has, everyone knows, an advanced technology called The Temperature Thingy which is much more reliable than, say, sticking one's finger out the window. And damned if the website doesn't look promising. In fact, sub-90s, 89.5°F. I note the half degree, wondering if they normally use these increments. The whole thing smacks of retail prices expressed in terms like $10.99. But never mind. There appears to be a trend. Cool or cooler. Which I think is pretty damn cool indeed, one hell of a hot deal.
And we're not talking fluid. I'm not sure what we are talking. What happens when I get overheated, well, it shouldn't happen to a dog. Even a mad dog, of the sort Noel Coward likened to Englishmen. Never mind. And that is the problem, once it starts getting hot I no longer have one. The mind, that is. It is gone, Gone With the Wind, of which there is none. That is the other problem. The Bay Area was designed for a sort of automated cooling, a Pacific Ocean-based technology that reliably works most of the time, but not all the time. It is, in short, the weather equivalent of Microsoft Windows. Pretty good, not completely reliable, and we're stuck with it. So fuck you.
Of course, one cannot avoid venturing out. Definitely a mistake when the Devils Breath is blowing from the northeast, but there seems to be little choice. Stay inside and introspect all day? Hardly. Yet what's out there is not encouraging. One step outside the door, actually four steps, down to where the concrete surrounding my apartment has begun to radiate, and you'll see what I mean. No, you probably won't. That's because there are excellent odds that you can sweat. No sweat, people say. They say it, thinking of perspiration as an intermittent phenomenon, something associated with exertion or living in Phoenix. But in my case, no sweat is a constant. Little sympathetic nerve damage, no sweat. No sweat forever. Well, a little, just not enough.
That's why the baking asphalt reduces me to a primordial state. Not Alabama, but very low on the evolutionary scale. In fact, if the heat keeps up, I have every reason to believe I will grow a few scales. Their evolutionary function is well established, and the quadriplegic species has not yet developed effective defenses. Scales would be good.
They weren't the ones my mother had in mind, of course. Those were the ones I was supposed to practice on the baby grand piano she had purchased with my Musical Career in mind. Unwisely, I will admit this, something in me balked at the notion of piano lessons. It was bad enough that I didn't know how to throw a baseball, in fact, barely knew the rules of the game. On top of this deficiency, I was supposed to bang away at the baby grand. Fuck it, I decided. Of course, my mother persevered. This tug of war went on long enough for the piano itself to become involved.
The hot winds blowing up from Palm Springs fought their way under closed doors, through window cracks, and went to work on the piano. Someone claimed it was out of tune. This certainly wasn't me. I mentally abandoned the thing early on. Well not quite, for a while I did practice this and that, and while piano scales are not exactly music to the ears, what was happening to the desiccating piano, manufactured somewhere on the East Coast, well, it was what one would imagine. Straight from hell. At first, my mother kept calling in a tuner. Perfectly sensible, of course, and this guy would sprawl beneath the piano, then stand over it, flicking a tuning fork, staring at the piano strings as though possessed. I stared with him. Actually, it was quite interesting what was under the lid. When the piano tuner was present, I had an opportunity to twang away at these wires, study the felt hammers. When the tuner went away, the bad sounds actually worsened. By the time of his return, something had actually cracked. The sounding board, I think, if there is such a thing beyond the metaphorical. Anyway, something wooden simply could not take the Upper Sonoran breath of hell known as the summer wind. Not being yet spinal-cord-injured, I did not even notice the heat. Except for the piano. The thing was clearly on its way out the door, and I could not have cared less.
These days, I can't help thinking of my friends Joe and Laurel in Sacramento. Yes, their home is thoroughly air-conditioned, I have no doubt. But on a day like this, they must be at one of the lowest levels of hell, the place where the real Badass types go. The sidewalks turn into a stirfry. Patio furniture glows red. A walk to, say, pick up the paper on the radiant driveway plunges one into a human shake and bake. Okay, so that's Sacramento, but I have to admit that's where I met Marlou. Actually, I met her twice. The first time in November apparently did not have sufficiently adverse conditions underlying it. So it took a second time, a summer visit, which forced both of us into the backyard swimming pool. The cooling water everywhere. Some of it running off Marlou's breasts. Time passing. And, what the heck, maybe we should try a date.
Proving that heat has a redeeming purpose. It cooks our asses. Cooks our brains. Cooks us down into something along the lines of a human fricassee. More basic, sometimes erotic. Making everything unpredictable, out of the quadriplegic's control, what little control there is. Chill out, they say. Be cool, they used to say. That's a hell of a way to...meet someone, it could be said. Yet without the heat, without the day's focus drawn to the body and its needs, where would I be today? No sense in speculating, of course. I am having enough trouble dealing with the next few minutes. Jane has promised that the fog is going to roll into night. 'The fog' being that semi-reliable coolant Bay Area residents count on, or think they can count on. Where is it? What if I go outside, where it is reliably hotter, look up the street toward the Coastal Range and see, or do not see, the stuff creeping in on little cat's feet? Better not. That's why God invented the Internet. The Weather Channel has, everyone knows, an advanced technology called The Temperature Thingy which is much more reliable than, say, sticking one's finger out the window. And damned if the website doesn't look promising. In fact, sub-90s, 89.5°F. I note the half degree, wondering if they normally use these increments. The whole thing smacks of retail prices expressed in terms like $10.99. But never mind. There appears to be a trend. Cool or cooler. Which I think is pretty damn cool indeed, one hell of a hot deal.
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