In the Summer, When It Sizzles

If you’d rather listen to this post than read it, tap the Play button in the track above to hear my voice.

My brain seems to be on vacation this week. And who can blame it? The forests are burning, the parasites are thriving, and anyone with good sense and sufficient means has escaped the smoke-choked cities for cooler, clearer climes. Naturally, my mind is trying to go with them.

I’ve never been a summer person. (I’ve written about this before.) In my opinion, any air temperature that causes me to sweat while standing still is too high, and if I don’t have access to a swimmable body of water, I see no reason to spend time outside. My friends have mostly stopped inviting me to outdoor movies and concerts in the summer, as they know my response will include a rant about humidity and biting insects. Picnics in the park? Forget it. Get back to me when the thermometer falls below 70.

I think in the future I may have to become a person who uses “summer” as a verb. As in, “I summer at the shore.” What shore? It doesn’t matter. Whatever shore will have me. I’d even go somewhere inland if it meant a respite from this hell.

I’m aware as I write this of the enormous privilege that is air conditioning. Paris, which welcomed me with exquisite weather in December and April, is both literally and figuratively burning, and its residents have little chance of cooling off indoors. (I doubt this is what Cole Porter meant when he wrote about loving Paris “in the summer, when it sizzles.”) While it may be true, as a recent Atlantic article posited, that Europeans are more tolerant of discomfort than Americans, it’s still horrific for anyone to endure the kind of extreme heat we’re now witnessing every summer.

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It’s all our fault, of course. Human beings started screwing up the planet two centuries ago, but we’ve really done a thorough job of it in the past few decades. I have a theory that the world actually ended in the year 2000, when we failed to properly elect Al Gore as president. Imagine that parallel universe: we halted climate change, never waged war on Iraq, enacted universal healthcare, maybe even elected a female leader who could have spearheaded what sociologist Riane Eisler calls a “caring economy.” Instead, the world is being run by monsters and we’re all scrambling to hide under the nearest bed.

The first fall fashion catalog of the season arrived in my mailbox yesterday. I feel cooler just looking at all the silk and corduroy.

Only two more months of summering to go…