Little Seasons - Short Meditations on the Weather - Royal Summer

Royal Summer


     It’s so hot that you let the song finish before getting out of the car. It’s parked under a tree and there hasn’t been a cloud in the sky in four days. The cedar mulch outside the grocery store is smoldering and sitting in the car and waiting for the song to play out, all the way out, is the most comfortable you’ve been all day. On your way back home you take the county route, and take it slow, and when you park under the willow you roll your windows all the way down. The night’s coming and it’ll be cool, or at least cooler by comparison. 


You sit out on the porch and look up at the night sky and don’t move, because when you don’t move you don’t sweat. The lights aren’t on and you can make out the thin specter of the Milky Way, though you’ve never been one for constellations. You let it blend except for a blink here and there from a star, or a plane, or a satellite. Out near the rock wall and the lilacs you also notice the blink blink blink blink of fireflies, never knowing if there were a lot of them or just a few blink blink blink blinking up and down the property line. 


You go inside and tell your dog it’s okay. It’s just fireworks again. The dog doesn’t really get it, but you like to think your voice is helping. It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay. The fireworks stop after a time and the dog doesn’t look any happier. It’s still under the desk, but it doesn’t need your help anymore so you go back outside. 


You’ve been moving so you sweat but the night air feels good, cool by comparison, and you look back up at the sky. 


It’s ten years later and the heat wave is running a little longer this season. Maybe a little longer the last few. There’s a new dog inside, under the desk. It also likes to hear you say it’s okay. You go back outside and the night air hits the sheen of sweat on your skin and you take a deep, contented breath. Sitting back down your eyes trail up to the sky that has always been, save a satellite or a plane or two, and you wonder how long it’s been since you saw a firefly.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Starting Onions - 92 Million Miles From the Sun

Image
       It's mid-February and while the daylight situation is improving, it is still total bullshit. I'm at about 42.6°N, which means that today we have around 10.5 hours of "daylight," but since this is winter in New York that daylight is filtered through a nearly ever-present gray cloak that renders everything a pallid shadow, myself included.       The sun is about 92 million miles away right now. That's pretty close in terms of both our own specific elliptical orbit and the general distance to just about anything else in the universe, but it is also a distance so great that it can't really be internalized by anyone. Ninety-two million miles isn't something you can close your eyes and experience second-hand, like a long drive to a grandparent's house, but in the winter, when it's dark when I head to work and dark when I leave, I think I can get a little closer to understanding that distance.
Read more

Welcome!

Image
       Welcome to 1% Inspiration, a blog dedicated to my inefficiency and also probably typographical errors. It has no theme and it will not be shared anywhere. It is a waste of time, but it's a waste of my time, though if you've found yourself here through some sort of search engine witchcraft, I hope it's not a complete waste of yours. 
Read more

A Cookbook of Irreproducible Results - A Miso Soup-ish

Image
     Welcome to the first installment of A Cookbook of Irreproducible Results - a series of recipes that rely on my specific ingredients, kitchen, and attentions. They are probably impossible to recreate, even by me, but that doesn't mean your specific ingredients, kitchen, and attentions, can't make a comparable or superior dish. They probably should, all things considered.     The unlisted first step in all of these recipes is: i.) do the dishes as you go - literally every recipe has one or two or five minutes here and there where you don't have to do anything. If you aren't doing anything, you could be doing the dishes. Regardless of how well this recipe turns out, you will be happier at the end if the dishes are done. Just do the dishes. A Miso Soup-ish      Miso soup traditionally begins with dashi,  which is a Japanese broth made from dried kelp and bonito flakes (smoked/fermented/dried skipjack tuna), but I don't have either of those,...
Read more