Overheating

The air is hot, the wind is hot, first really hot day of the year, humidity right at 100%. I might buy a small window air-conditioner for the computer. Black Dell is not happy in this weather. I have a couple of freezer packs in a bowl next to her flank, she labors. Big storms forecast for tonight, it's rained every day since the fire. Mackletree, ragged as it is, is still 10 degrees cooler than the rest of the county, the canopy intact because the fire didn't reach that tall. Ominous rumbles, still a ways away. Thunder is noise created by a shock wave of air set in motion by an abrupt electrical discharge. Read that somewhere, made a note. I might have changed some of the words, but what a sweet distillation. I love thunder and lightning, the power they wield. I fear for my life, yet it's comforting, to hear Loki and Odin bowling in the apartment upstairs. At least you know where you are. These evening thunder showers of late, I'm almost always sitting in my chair, writing you. I Save, usually the power goes out, I read my oil-lamp light, eat something that doesn't have to be cooked (a cold can of beans) and feel fairly well centered. I have plenty of everything because I brought in supplies tonight, all the major food groups plus booze and tobacco, don't need to budge from the ridge until Tuesday. I have a list of things to do, I really need to at least start some of them. In this mode, now, of reading, reflecting, and writing. It's all I want to do. The last couple of years, I barely maintain a path from where I park my truck and the house. The chair situation is soon to be completely reconfigured. I found a chair in the museum basement that is an exact match to my 'writing chair' and I've worn this chair out. I wanted a new chair or an upholstery job, and here it was. Which meant that things would bump along, as long as I agreed what game we were playing. I mean 'game' in a special way, not like a chess match of anything, more like something you experienced in real time. My shoulders hurt because I've been mopping forever. Lost power again, the local grid maxed out, everyone running AC for the first hot night of the year. No ceiling fans for me, so I get out the oil lamp, set it at the end of the sofa on a stand near my head, strip to skivies, dampen a towel with cold water, stretch out and read with the (thread-bare) towel across my body. Not bad. It's a little awkward because I have to get a block of wood to keep the book off the wet towel, and every time I get up, to roll a smoke, get a drink, find the definition for a word, it involves moving several things and having a place for them. I move a kitchen chair over, and I can put the block on the seat and drape the towel over the back. Works fine, a small flashlight at hand. Thinking about getting one of those new generation of head lights: now, when I need both hands in the dark, I have to hold the flashlight in my mouth or under my arm and it's damned difficult. When the power came back on, I was sleeping on the sofa, under a towel, with a wood block wedged uncomfortably against my elbow. I had put the book safely aside, blown out the light (dear Laura), gone outside and looked at the night, peed in the dark. It's all brain surgery, what you think you see. A myth on which you place belief. I think it's more complex than that. Worse than you thought. Everything comes to bear. How do you, then, respond? I think you should read more books, learn how to do more things. I think, extending the next size garbage bag. I'm completely open to anything you might say. I consider myself another dufus, a sloppy map job, sweet home Chicago. But, that's my thing. Being slightly off beat.