Notes From A Burning House

…and so once again, words try to find little cracks through the inexpressible, as undaunted as ants that chew through barriers and press on in determined formations. 

Hot.  Hot.  Hot.  Even the shadows take shelter elsewhere and leave us alone in unrelenting, pitiless light.  Too hot to stay home, too hot to go anywhere.  Get in the air conditioned Civic and just cruise town, look for a book store, look for another cafe.

Go to Seal Beach, and walk along the ocean even though it is hot here, too, and everyone is talking about the hottest summer they remember.  Why talk about the heat on the news and with your neighbors, unless it is for the simple reason that it is too hot to think of anything else than the present experience, that to depart from the pure experience of dripping-wet humidity and extreme temperature required too much energy, that to think of another topic in a space without air conditioning could induce headaches and nausea.  It is too hot to manage this, and I find refuge in Hennessy’s pub where I keep a book company with a cold sandwich and an even colder beer. 

Go to Long Beach and watch two dog owners face off in a similar manner, if a bit more erudite, than their dogs have just confronted one another.  Contender #1 is a Belmont Shore resident in spandex leggings and a t-shirt, with a rouged face and blue eye makeup, walking her very large dog.  He seems to be as tall as some of the BMW’s parked on the street here, who could damage an adversary with a head-butt as well as with his bite.  Contender #2 is a barrel-chested man who learned his civic values from an unruly frat house, banging open his front door and allowing his own large dog to lunge out of the house without a leash.  The dog is essentially a beer keg with four hamhock legs, leaving a long, slick line of drool behind him.  Frat man himself does not exactly bound after the dog - indeed, if he and contender #1 were in a foot race, Madame Rouge would sail past him without sweating off her rouge.  Frat man’s bounding days are over. 

So it took him a while to catch up when Beer Keg Dog launches after The Empire State Dog, who looks down from his tremendous height as the low-lying, wide-built malamongrel introduces himself by sinking his glistening, spit-slick teeth into Tall Dog’s legs.  Madame Rouge is already yelling to the skies about the assailant not being on a leash, and don’t people understand there are leash laws.  She zigs, her dog zags, and suddenly she is falling backwards - one of those falls that are hilarious in a cartoon, when the head disappears and you see feet pedalling in the air.  A great pratfall. 

Frat man (a bit of a prat himself) is entirely focused on getting his ambulatory beer keg out of the confrontation, and finally - finally - produces a leash and clips it to the animal’s collar.  Miraculously, neither guardian has gotten bitten for their intervention, and although Marmaduke had his attacker’s leg in his jaws and had hoisted him in the air, it appears no blood was spilled.

Madam Rouge, now standing again, tells Frat Man that this is why there are leash laws.  Frat Man retorts that with dogs like hers, he can see why such laws are necessary.  A cheap shot, considering it was his unleashed dog that attacked.  At no point did Frat Man ask Madame Rouge about her fall and whether she was hurt.  Instead, he stalked off with Beer Keg dog with an air of pugnaciously indignant self-righteousness.  Madame Rouge and the Sears Tower went in the opposite direction, with a promise that she would send Her Husband to the guy’s house. 

The Husband.  Oh no, not the Husband.  Time to leave Belmont Shore. 

Try to sleep, try to wake up.  Can you manage either?  Try to blog - but your fingers stick to the keys, and the letters have begun to wear off and drip onto the table in a Dali-esque mess.  Put an ice cube on top of your head and let it melt slowly as you rock in your chair.  Break out the uke and practice for a while but the chords don’t sound right because the G, E, and A strings play but the C-string just says, "Lord of all the holy mercies it is HOT!!!"  no matter what key you try and after a few strums it seems like it’s not going to get any better.  Drink some iced tea and think about your radio script and jot a few more things on the sketch pad but soon again that effort to focus the mind on some other realm begins to burn units of heat that pop in the brain and smell like spent firecrackers so you have another iced tea and touch the wall and realize it’s hot, too, it’s so hot the house could begin to tire of standing there and decide to lie down and throw your dishes crashing to the floor in the process.

Pray for lightining, pray for rain, and the sun goes down with the fan blowing unlit air into the room and the air-conditioned cars outside still zooming back and forth, back and forth, with no place to go. 

Yet if you keep your mind still, the heat travels through you like so much steam and you can find your way of sitting in it.  So it is with everything: just surrender and be hot.  Drink some water.  Sit in front of the fan.  Go ahead and take your shirt off - it’s too hot for Sunday best.  Too hot for skin, even.  Take it off and hang it on the rail outside, right next to mine.  We two skeletons can just sit here and drink iced tea and not think about a damned thing.

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