naked days

I'm writing from Day 3 of a forecasted week-long heat wave of sit-and-sweat proportions.  It feels mildly apocalyptic.  (Is anybody sensing a theme here??  I'm increasingly convinced that something big is about to change -- from an explosion of "we might not have tomorrow" pop songs to theories that cell phone towers are causing a drastic increase in tornadic activity to a struggling capitalist economy, it has to, right?  Something's gotta give...)

Everything is sweating.  People, glasses, cans and bottles, toilets, buildings, the ashtray at the library, our upstairs windows this morning...  I've been working long days since the heat wave set in and I'm sure I drink gallons of water, only to sweat it all out almost instantly.  I get home and spend the evening moving as little as possible, wearing as little as possible while simultaneously trying not to get ravaged by mosquitoes and potential bed spiders (Ann is convinced, but I'm willing to attribute the rampant bites to the fact that we were hanging out on the patio on Friday night).  The wind in my face on the way down the hill to work in the morning is a welcome stirring in the otherwise heavy air, but even the breeze is hot, like a desert wind but with water molecules filling it up instead of sand.  It's like monsoon, without the rain.  Everything is sticky.  Everything is growing mold.  Milk sours almost instantly outside the fridge.  Ice melts in minutes.  We sweat standing perfectly, painfully still.