The weather sticks to my skin like a t-shirt worn while swimming. It clings heavily to my body and weighs me down like I've just emerged lugubriously from the lukewarm shallows of a backyard pool. Dripping, saturated, oppressive. It restricts my very existence. And it's not even August yet.
The recent rains have fomented yesterday's birth of a new society of winged adversaries. Just as I have with their ancestors for so many generations, I'll do my best to fend off the hordes with only two hands at the end of flailing arms. These morning stars of flesh and sinew, seemingly omnipotent when compared to a mere speck moving less than five miles per hour, will have little effect. Any blow successfully struck will only come after the fact and certainly not in time. The only real benefit reaped will be a demonstration of pathetic futility, the kind that serves as a darkly comedic reminder of the supreme power of nature over the will of man.
They'll win. They always do. I'll yield them the high ground and retreat to the safety of my air-conditioned embattlement, my only bulwark against the invasion. I won't engage in chemical warfare. One of us has to maintain civility, even in the heat.
Even the cat rues the season. The pet door swings in the other room and his tortured mewling belies his presumed status as top predator and ultimate master of his universe, the yard. His lips parted, his eyes dulled, his gait, laborious and deliberate, all personify the external incalescence for any who have the strength to give notice.
He'll seek the kind of rejuvenation that can only come from a loving caress at the hand of his master. But that alone won't suffice. Staying nearby, he'll relocate to a spot of minimum potential energy and efficiently transfer excess heat to the cool, flat, tile. He'll watch. He'll wait. He'll eventually discover the will to groom himself. And then, pretending he has sensed an occurrence worthy of his investigative prowess, he'll spring to life and urgently evacuate the room.
On his way, and safely out of sight of course, he'll stop to rehydrate from the clear glass reservoir that gives his lifeblood in these calefactive periods. And once again, the pet door will creak quickly as it swings the other way and he returns to his command post under the car to fulfill his natural duty: ensuring the squirrel and bird populations remain under strict control.
He knows. I know. There is no sufficient synonym for humidity. Anything less than empiricism falls manifestly short.
Here, in the cool dry comfort of this venerable stronghold, immune to humectation, I realize that this kind of urbane civility can only be artifically maintained. For outside this layercake made of paint, gypsum, fiberglass, and cinderblock, there lies a harsh reality. All that truly stands between this cozy existence in a bastion of relative opulence and the brutality of nature's inclemency is a precariously balanced society that, at least for today, is capable of providing and transmitting to me the energies needed to sustain my place within. Here, in the luxury of my sanctum, contemplating this, I realize that if not for the immediacy and convenience of nearby foodstores, if not for the thaumaturgy of electricity, I am left simply to forage in the yard, competing with the cat for squirrel meat.
So why then does the landscape, brilliantly illuminated by deceptively benign sunshine, lush and verdant as only recent summer rains can beget, look so luscious and tantalizing despite my knowledge of the harsh truth? How can the tortured existence that awaits me on the other side of that windowpane look so much more appealing, so preferable? When did safety, comfort, and security become my prison?
The transition is surely immediate and occurs simultaneously with passage from one milieu to the next. Upon ingress, it is only the palpable and immediate respite from severe conditions that provides a totally ephemeral distraction from my discontinued freedom. Eventually, imprisoned is how I feel. For no matter how exquisitely ornamented the interior, no matter how many succorable amenities are strategically positioned to aid and comfort the inhabitant, it is by it's very nature, confinement, restriction, incarceration.
Eventually, like the cat, I too will regain my exuberance and exfiltrate, trading hard tile for soft earth. The idea of it sustains me and almost distracts me from the inevitability of what awaits: a vain struggle against clouds of vampiric devils who lay claim to this suburban hell of inescapable heat, and yes, humidity.
Welcome to Florida in July.
No comments:
Post a Comment