Oh This Heat

This heat.

This miserable heat.

On Monday, I finally mustered up the determination to go for a walk. My stalwart friend Cornelia came over and the two of us trudged up the canyon, across a ridge, and down to the beach. Then she went for a swim, and I removed my shoes and stood on the shoreline with my trousers rolled up like J. Alfred Prufrock, toes in the surf, cool silky water splashing now and then on my legs. That's about as wet as I get, but it was something.

It's been hard to sleep.I'm learning some good techniques, though. Last night when I lay awake thinking about very sad things, I decided to assert my own self-protective will and declared those things off limits. I pushed them aside in my head and built a wall in front of them...a very thick gray impenetrable partition of concrete and steel and I told myself, yes, those things are always there, but I don't need to look at them. Ha. It's like storing nuclear waste.

Another good technique is listening to podcasts. I fell back asleep to a wonderfully deep male voice, a voice like wood smoke and bourbon by a river. I was asleep even before his story ended.

For three evenings in a row we've gone to the beach to cool down. Last night there was a howling offshore wind and white sea spray was flying from the tops of waves that were breaking unpredictably in the shallow water. It was fun to watch guys surfing, some getting air (I'm told that's the term for it) and doing rotations, others getting slammed.

Then we shared a light dinner with friends at a picnic table, the table cloth lifting with every gust of wind, our talk circling aimlessly in the air.

Not much of a blog post, is it? But it's all I can manage for now.