I knew this day was going to be weird when I woke up to Glenn Beck on the radio telling David Mamet his (Mamet's) new book was well-written (which would be like me telling Jack Nicklaus he's a decent golfer). We're not even into June double figures ("summer" is two weeks away), my back is still recovering from my last bout of snow shovelling, and my sneakers are still drying out from spring's constant deluges, and the temperature reached at least 94 today (and lucky me, I was off from work today, so I was without air conditioning). I've been steadily sweating a languid sweat for twelve hours. This is dog days weather, end of July, beginning of August (a school teacher's cruelest month), actually looking forward to October weather. But on June 8? Bah.
Summers used to be better...street baseball and telephone pole to telephone pole football games, ghost runners and three completes for a first down, heads up car coming, come in when the streetlights come on, proud, active sweat, kick the can ghosts in the graveyard, grape popsicles and Kool-Aid packets and Hi-C poured from punctured tall aluminum cans, PF Flyers and Red Ball Jets and Keds, breezes that actually cooled, black and white TV on the back porch, nectarines, big black ants smashed on flagstones, slugs after rains, bicycle rides around the block, and always the nightly scorecard ritual: licking a finger and rubbing off the day's and evening's accumulated dirt from those little indentations below each knobby ankle bone, the more dirt I could rub off, the better the day had been...
No ankle dirt today, just stagnant sweat pooling everywhere.
Mark Kozelek--Celebrated Summer
