Dog Daze

I can’t help but sit here and think about all those novels set in the deep south that begin with a description of the long wearisome heat of summer that bears down on the mind and the senses. Something about women bathing before noon and gentlemen wiping the damp from their foreheads with a yellowing handkerchief. Every one of my pores breaks out in an absolute panic each time I set foot outside. I am like a deep-sea diver descending into a foreign land, my sweat like a layer of armor against the elements.

Yesterday S. and I were the pool where I fished a dead cicada out of the water. “What is that?” she asked.
“A cicada., the trees are full of them.”
“Why” she asks, not so much to further the conversation but really more to say “I have nothing at all to say to that.”
“Listen” I say “you can hear them all around us.” The trees are full to the aching whine that is the distinctive sound to the insect.
“I don’t hear anything.”
Incredulous I point to first one group of trees and then the next. “There” I say “and there. No?” Nothing. Like a pungent aroma that seemingly vanishes within minutes of first detecting it, she has managed to pushed the sound out of mind and memory till it has become completely undetectable. “Nothing at all?”

Cicadas aside there is a kind of meditative stillness to the long, hot, dog days of summer. Total immersion creates a kind of restfulness that monks achieve after years of contemplations. Standing in my make shift studio in the garage, the banter of my mind is silenced by the drone of the fan blowing against me. Paint stiffens in the heat and the wet bristles of the brush begin to wilt. The eye darts from canvas to canvas making spontaneous decisions in an effort to out pace the heat.