Hazy, Hot, and Humid

Heaven.

I am literally in my element when things get muggy.

Make that elements plural: fire and water. It’s perfect. I go out for a run and it’s like I have been enveloped by a heavy wet blanket. I can barely move. I slog. Good for you, running in this! people say as I pass, noting how pathetic I look, thinking I need their encouragement. They don’t know that I love every slow motion step, every labored breath.

In this weather, I am a slug. I have no ambition, and I don’t even care that I have no ambition. The bare minimum feels like Everest. I pat myself on the back for replacing the toilet paper roll. Not only does it take physical effort, it shows I have summoned up the ability to plan for the future.

My writing suffers, of course, because my brain is sludge. I should feel bad about this, but I don’t, not really, because my ability to cobble together a cohesive logical thought, never mind an entire narrative, is gone, along with any consequent guilt or anxiety.

Adding to my joy this summer is my decision to let my hair explode. Rather than brushing and flat-ironing it into pony-tailed submission, I’m doing nothing, just letting humidity have its way with it. I just add water and it expands, like a bathtub sponge animal.

I know this humid air mass will shift. Some thunderstorm or dip in the jet stream will come along, and I’ll return to my regular energetic, ambitious self. When I’m in air conditioning long enough, I feel that me begin to emerge, which signals that it’s time to I head outside into the morass of stagnant air which is maybe half water and definitely not enough oxygen and what was I thinking about? Taking a nap? Something like that.