the cool of the day

The weekend felt longer than it was, scored random swank at garage sales in Lakewood, attempted to jump a friend's dead battery to find out later that it was just a dead car, stood outside in a suburban parking lot in the rain marveling at the kindness of strangers, before heading back to the neighborhood for a book discussion on Cannery Row which was good times all around, since I've loved Steinbeck since my teens and getting to have unpretentious and smart conversations about books is always welcome in my world.

The Saturday heat wasn't so much out of character, just the feeling of sun and concrete is overwhelming, but I walked the dog I was watching down to the lake where I waded into the who-knows-what water up to my ankles and she immersed herself when she wasn't trying to roll in the dead fish on the beach or make friends with the pit bulls tied to the tree. It feels too warm to cook sometimes, so I drink lemonade and glass after glass of water and pore through the pile of library booksale paperbacks, filling in all the blanks of my book collection with Kafka, Orwell, Huxley (the current state of affairs has made my political sentiments more dystopian by the day), fragments of Sappho, sundry epic poetry. The cat curls up on the couch and looks on with green eyes.

Sunday morning it is warm, and we're all tired, and the humidity messes with the tuning pegs and pickups of our instruments, I don't get the crunch I want, but I'm too slackerly to tweak the knobs too much and instead ponder thoughts and feelings and human frailties, thankful that any butterflies of feelings have long flown away. We celebrate a birthday at my parents' and I hang out with my younger cousins, talk politics with the bro-in-law, and gardens with the uncles as we celebrate the coming rain until I realize I've left the windows open.

Nothing's damaged, I walk the dog through the darkening streets in the cool of the day, thinking about edens, since everything feels like it's growing, the blue water in the distance, the swirl Van Gogh sky, the flecks of lightning insect sparkle on the grass, and the children riding tricycles on broken pavement. Her neighbors are drinking beer and showing off their guns. The house is finally cooled and I curl up with F. Scott Fitzgerald and defer the phone calls needing to be returned another day. I feel like I'm in love with summer rain like few other things.