in the hall of mirrors

The whole point

I'm enjoying this blog. It's not a big deal, I know – mostly just small, casual writing, with the address shared with a few friends – but it is succeeding in exactly what I wanted it to do, that is, helping me to get into the habits of writing, communicating, thinking, making sentences. Even at the lightest level – and this is basically a kind of journalism lite – it's already distinctly productive from my point of view: this gets easier, I feel better about it and about things in general, and the vast stretches of research and writing I should be doing (instead? along side?) look less impossible and guilt-ridden than they did a couple of months ago. In fact, it is kind of like doing journalism: and, as we all know, many writers spend long stretches of their career on journalism... it's a while since I wrote the many reviews and short pieces I wrote in the mid-80s and early 90s, so it's good to get back to something that has the same effect.

There are, though, two faintly tricky aspects: one is the difference between a traditional journal and this; the other is the changing context of the Blogsphere.

I already have journals: nice (sometimes very nice – I like Moleskines, very much) blank books, in which I've made occasional entries, especially while traveling and sitting in restaurants and cafes. Naturally, those journals function in a context that is considerably less tricky than blogging: one can write anything at all, one can be boring, one can babble incoherently, one can quote fragments of remembered poetry, one can draft and sketch and scribble down secrets. Those are all of the pleasures of a journal – as opposed to a blog.

Not that this is such a massively public forum: few people read these pages, and my name isn't on it. But it is still 'published', or made public, in the technical sense: and I know that other academics (and at least one New York nanny) have been concerned about the potential problems of talking about relatively private thoughts in a public forum.

Of course, I'm not known for being secretive – even in my academic writing, I tend to tell stories on or about myself, and some of my most successful articles have been grounded on examining my own (sometimes undignified or tacky) reactions. Some of that is merely my nature – as a thinking type, I'm not terribly sensible or completely in control when it comes to questions of emotions or social connection; I tend to regard those questions as areas of potential research (research to be followed in public, with myself and my friends as experimental subjects!), and anyway I'm not terribly good at instinctively knowing when to stop before I go too far. Besides, the years in San Francisco encouraged me to treat people as relatively 'safe' receivers of personal information (just think how different I would be if I'd gone to New York in the late 1970s, rather than the West Coast).

It's a bit like being a confessional poet: having read perhaps a bit too much Sexton or Plath – and it's a position that was exacerbated by my own circumstances. For instance, several of my most personal academic papers were written in the years when I still expected to die at any point – I thought they would be 'final' statements, so it didn't seem to matter that I would tell all.

The other tricky part is, as I mentioned, the Blogsphere. 75,000 new blogs a year (most tank pretty soon, of course); newspaper articles and television shows about the Phenomenon; commercial use, publicity, media connections. None of that interests me at all, but of course it makes this all a bit dubious: as if writing about one's own ideas isn't egotistical enough, the vast sectors of the Blogsphere that seem to want this to be a version of Pop Idol tar the whole idea of blogs with a slightly tacky brush. (Now there's a blurred metaphor – consider it my gift to you.)

Oh well. This blog is what it is, and I can use it however I like. And maybe I'll start doing some Real Writing – if I do, it will be partly because of this – this blog....

Temptations

Dinner with P– on Friday – tapas and two (!) pitchers of sangria.

That's not as dramatic as it sounds – this sangria wasn't very strong; normally one good glass of sangria can have me giggling and inept, but I suspect this was only the wine, juice and fruit, with no brandy slipped into it. Ah well, it was the tapas restaurant near the river, which has a fine and stylish outside location, but rather second-rate food. I've also noticed that none of the waiters seem to be from Spain – although, when I asked whether our friendly, pleasant-looking, wide-mouthed waiter was Italian (as so many of the restaurant's employees are), he was annoyed with me. He tangled me in a guessing game in which I did very badly – "I'm from the only place between two continents" – I thought Malta? or maybe something Baltic, or somewhere in the tangle of Oceanic islands? No, he meant Istanbul – which, for some reason, he called Constantinople. I felt a bit silly – of course, the Turks like to point out that their country, and capital, are split between Europe and Asia. Come to think of it, I should have talked to him more about being Greek – why else would someone from Istanbul say he was from Constantinople, unless he was of Greek parentage?

Oh, and: the whole also heavily colored by the hot day, pleasurably moving into a light evening, outside near the river; and I've just had a haircut (very short), and am wearing pirates (those Spanish short jeans - yo ho ho) and sneakers, and generally feeling light, cheerful, young. Ish.

But enough context. That's not what this entry is about. At some point the conversation turned to upcoming travel, vacations, Spain, Barcelona Sitges. I started telling P– about my plan for a few August days visiting Susan and Rob during their annual August-in-Sitges vacation. Ended up waxing very lyrical – and trying to be very convincing: as P– has never been in Spain, I thought he would enjoy Sitges a lot – especially because it has such a strong context of relaxed, self-respecting, cheerful sensuality, which I think P– could afford to experience more in his life. Well that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

In my attempt to convince, I started to catalogue the beauties of Barcelona and Sitges: the dramatic, stylish beauty – someone once said that, although it's a much smaller city, Barcelona could give Paris a run for its money. The fun and warmth of it all: I– always tells me that I should visit Madrid, because it's much livelier – by Spanish standards, Barcelona is considered haughty and cold – but let's face it, that's in a Spanish context. Compared to northern England (heck, compared to anywhere in northern Europe, or North America for that matter, including Mexico), practically anywhere in Spain is livelier and more fun.

I can prove it's more fun – on my first visit to Sitges, which came after I had spent a lot more time in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Belgium, there came a night when, at about 4 am, we were arguing over which wine to drink with dinner. In a café, about twenty yards from the ocean. And I thought: wow... this is lots more fun than Basel. And I also thought: what a shame I didn't specialize in Spanish music....

I told him how dramatic and stylish the local gay communities are; how fun, how really enjoyable (as opposed to the rather beer-soaked, shabby approach in provincial Britain, but I didn't say that of course). The casual beach life, the sunny streets... there are so many beauties, so many temptations, to the whole experience. And last year, for the first time, I stayed in Sitges and visited Barcelona, rather than the reverse, and discovered that it was just as much fun, and vastly more relaxing.

Well, the upshot was: I talked myself into it. If there was any question about whether I was going to go myself, it's been decided.

As for P–, who knows?...

Bookshelf

Enjoying Henry Petroski's The Book on the Bookshelf. He has a slightly unexpected style – very educated, articulate, intelligent – but at the same time rather stiff, with not infrequent falls into gracelessness. Perhaps it's just because he is a design engineer, who has become fascinated with books. I get the sense that he sometimes regards words as tools, to be logically/rationally deployed; and other times he uses metaphors and idioms with a drunken-sailor extravagance (which, in this case, also includes said drunken sailor's inability to exactly control his actions). However, it's still quite wonderful and sensible; it's lots of fun to go into the mechanics of books and bookshelves (more than you might think).

It occurs to me that the slight irritation – that slight ache of the teeth, as it were – that I feel at his style is more my fault than his. After all, he is not a stylist, he is a scholar; and I read too much for pleasure, too much for style. I should be spending much more time on scholarly literature; it's a shame that my own discipline (musicology) is not for the most part known for its interesting style, except for the contemporary radicals – but I should be reading them anyway.

Susan kept the books she needed to read, to work with, at home; at her office were only those professional books that she didn't particularly care about, or needed only for classes. Philip had vast and pleasant bookshelves at home, including his professional books. But I have made the mistake – and, although organizationally sensible, it probably is a mistake – of keeping all of my professional books in my office: a pleasant office indeed, but there is no couch to lie on, and there is always too much of the garbage of unimportant work (administration, classes) that is in the way....

aargh...

it ITCHES.

Well, it did, anyway. After much rather frantic vacuuming, washing, and a happy improvement in the weather – now merely warm rather than hot – things are finally okay....

It started some years ago – must be about 1990/1991 – the summer that Steven was my roommate. It was after Paul P– moved out, after his life and job disintegrated under the impact of his introduction to drugs that were heavier than he was accustomed to. Steven lived with me for three months – an obviously, even self-evidently, sweet guy, with a serene, rather saintly demeanor. That didn't, unfortunately, make me like him – perhaps the loss of a good friend as a roommate, or perhaps that saintliness, which seemed to cover up a mild, self-absorbed shallowness, acted like a minor but endless irritation on me.

Steven had a dog, a big red setter, who came with lots and lots of fleas. And it was summer... so, when I finally decided I wasn't willing to live with the dog, or Steven, any more, I continued having the fleas as roommates. It was difficult to get them out of the floorboards; and I probably hadn't tried as hard as I could, because for most of the year you didn't notice – only at the height of summer was there inevitably a sudden burst of bites.

When I moved back to San Francisco, I assumed I'd brought them with me, in the rugs or something. And then in Hong Kong, and then later here in England... because every year, at the peak of summer, usually when I was thinking in the back of my mind that this year I would be left alone, suddenly one day I would start to itch like I was being bitten. Completely maddening; hard to sleep, restless but tired, and usually lasting several weeks. At least I thought I was being bitten... a year or two later I heard that Steven had died of AIDS – which was unexpected, as he had seemed distinctly healthier than I when we shared that apartment (or, at least, he was obsessed with his health – but I suppose that was actually the opposite signal). This was all of a piece with the peculiarity that I would live when a lot of friends and lovers didn't – even my entire HIV therapy group (three years later, only two out of six us were still around).

So last summer, I started itching again. Completely infuriated and increasingly frantic, I went to the doctor to get some clear information – was I getting bitten or not? After two visits, and some extended arguing (I must have been at my most irritating with the poor doctor – itching is not amusing, and I was certain something was biting me), the doctor convinced me that there was nothing there at all – that I was simply having a summer allergy to dust, probably to dust mites at the height of summer, a result of not vacuuming enough and needing a new mattress, etc. I went out and spent about £200 or so on new bedding, and anti-dust mite sprays....

So, when yesterday it started again, I knew what to do. And glory be, it worked.

Strange, though: it reminds me of a minor event in Gaiman's Sandman, when Delirium (the personification of madness), in irritation at a highway patrolman who is criticizing her driving, curses him with the delusion that he is covered with insects – forever.

Of course, maybe it wouldn't take such a severe curse. Just, maybe, a rather small curse: if someone, say when they're told to move out of an apartment, put a hoodoo on someone so that, every summer, they would remember the fleas, the dog – and perhaps Steven himself....

Indulgences

No, not Catholic ones. (Always amusing to note: although my father was brought up Catholic, and my mother Orthodox, they got married and became Presbyterian – which here, close to Scotland, is a tale that brings in a lot of incredulous looks. I suspect they want to know: why on earth would one become Presbyterian if one didn't have to? And didn't care about predestination?...)

[LATER ADDENDUM: My eldest sister checked some of the stories I told below, when she was at a cousin's wedding – seems that there are some inaccuracies in what I was told about who changed religions and when – more details later.]

I'm finally recovering from feeling overwhelmed over the past few weeks, although I know there's a mass of research and administration waiting for me; today I was reading an e-book (Emma Bull's Bone Dance, which was pretty good from the beginning, and is getting markedly more interesting in the middle); then went out for a relaxed antipasto with Tess, while discussing plans for a writing workshop (which didn't require that much discussion, but she wanted reassurance that we were on the same page; and we had fun, flirting with Italian waiters). Then went to a movie with P– (Pirates 2, of course – fun if rather gloopy – there's an amazing amount of slime in it, I hope I don't dream of squids and such). Then we went for a pint (really three drinks, but knowing me the middle one was mango juice) to the Head of Steam, which is always a nice compromise among bars/pubs – not really gay but with gay guys casually dotted here and there, and many surprisingly cute straight ones; sort of alternative but not aggressively so; and they have Belgian Frambozenbier, which is a big plus. Although I still get fairly bored by the bars of northern England, P– could convince me (with my admitted collusion) to stay for two hours – just the prospect of looking at cheerful lads, and talking to My Buddy, seemed enough. Lots of indulgences....

P– was talking about Angela Carter's short stories, which he's been reading; some he doesn't like at all. I was defending them, generically and without specifics, which is of course a pretty weak position to take; but I suspect P–'s scientific background is causing him to miss the interesting bits of some of her more experimental stories, or at least not to enjoy them as they're meant to be enjoyed. They may be a bit edgy and formalist, but that makes sense – it's of a piece with British experimentation of the 1960s and 1970s; from my angle they would compare to, say, early Maxwell Davies, when he did all those short pieces with aggressively traditional roots and equally aggressively experimental surface textures. I'm not thinking so much of Eight Songs for a Mad King, or Vesalii icones, although those are exactly in this style/genre; but instead of the short choral works that are so utterly startling – that ruthless Ave Maria that is made up of unadulterated medieval monody, served straight up, but then set in an almost unbelievably intense a capella texture of major sevenths and minor seconds. The piece is made even more beautifully, artistically edgy by being notated almost entirely in sharps, in a way that is both hard to sightread and very clear in intention – there's no way it can soften into something casual or unproblematic; it always feels like a knife dance, and one that needs to be carefully negotiated if the singers are to reach the end without wounds.

And that reminds me of Mr Punch: my post on Gaiman's comic reminded me of what is still my favorite piece by Birtwistle, also written when he was young (and, I think, a close friend and colleague of Maxwell Davies – a Brit composer was gossiping to me last week on the train about when they split up, and how they refused to talk to each other after a certain point, but I'm pretty sure it was after this). It's the opera Punch and Judy (1967), which, like those Maxwell Davies pieces, is constructed in short, easily (structurally) graspable pieces, which are nevertheless so, well, sharp-edged, that in grasping them you cut yourself (and how's that for a bizarrely extended metaphor). Amazingly shrill and savage, but all in short, easy-to-hear pseudo-traditional quatrains and such; it's a remarkably powerful work. Unlike the Gaiman comic, which refers atmospherically to children's memories of Mr Punch, it actually creates those emotions, and in adults – the length (hmm, according to my CDs it's about... uh, I'm adding in my head here... an hour and three quarters) with the rapid repetitions of short phrases, plus the shrill, familiar-but-twisted instrumentation, make it a powerful, almost a psychotic experience. And in an unexpected way, too: one doesn't get any impression that the composer is psychotic, but that in a strange way the music itself is psychotic – as, of course, is Mr Punch.

(Afterthought: does this compare to that cynicism that I so dislike in a lot of British postwar novels? – Martin Amis, or even those Byatt novels with miserable endings... no, this seems different to me: it's more formal, more self-consciously artistic – which saves it, as far as I'm concerned: so much elegant artifice  implies that something is worth doing, unlike the trashier approach of Amis and such.)

Hmm, maybe, despite its second paragraph, this post isn't about indulgences: it's about indulgences and flagellations – since that is sort of what these works are like.... How very Catholic.

Or maybe I'm just dithering – not a surprise, after two beers (and a juice). Hey, don't sneer! – one of them was a Belgian beer – higher alcohol content... it's a relief to get rid of this shirt, though, which smells of bar smoke....

Secrets

Read today Gaiman's Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy of Mr Punch – quite wonderful. I know that in becoming a Neil Gaiman fan, I'm jumping onto a very large bandwagon, and doing so pretty late in the day – but this one was really a surprise: a slow, dense, atmospheric tour of the shadows and incomprehensibilities of the author's childhood. A time when adults do casual, everyday things – and disturbing ones – at a level that a child can't understand: the whole world of apparent secrets, of illusions that the world conceals great mysteries. In fact, of illusions that adults know what they're doing: that adults actually understand their own actions.

This is probably why P– and I are such good friends: we both had that kind of experience when we were little.

Even though that kind of cluelessness – typical, perhaps, of extreme thinking types – is alarming, or perhaps even frightening, for a child, in that same person as an adult, it would lead to a fascination with figuring things out, with secrets, with Theory (as practiced in literary/cultural circles). The latter, of course, applies rather heavily to me....

Remarkable, the English fascination with Punch and Judy. Actually, it's not that remarkable – the mere fact that such a bizarre, intense thing would exist would certainly leave a mark on many children who saw it.

Different

Continuing, in the night, this uneasy fascination with change, time, life – the night is still hot, the pillow still like a heating pad.

It was all probably produced by the long bursts of heavy, outward-directed work of the past weeks, that have finally left me dried out, tired – in the midst of this heat. And helping C– move today (or, more accurately, not helping much; I did take her to dinner afterward as a slightly guilty show of support). Which means my dear neighbor of four years is gone, to be replaced by lord only knows what.

Watching television, yet again, after reading some of those graphic novels (comics to you): what if by some twists and turns I had ended up in media, rather than the arts or academe? I would probably have been better at it (I am after all a rather sloppy intellectual, with a fairly casual education, and what might be called a rather weak or flimsy spirit); though I might not have had the energy for the pressures of media life – on the other hand, there are many niches in media life and popular art forms, and I might have found one that I could have handled. And if such a life had caught me early enough, I probably would have found a more continuous energy – the longueurs of my life might simply never have happened.

However, I can also sense how quickly I would have gotten frustrated at the shallowness of what is allowed; not many people in media/popular arts get to live in their dreamscapes, most are merely put to work in what is usually fairly trashy day-to-day production.

So: a life that would have had more money, more employment continuity, but probably more existential frustration... hmm.

And what about tomorrow, which is Monday? Shouldn't I be doing some boring academic administration? Can I coast for the day? Will it be so hot that every activity seems to be called into question?

Night, heat, stasis, change

Last night remained hot – not very hot, but hot enough to reproduce that feeling of endless night, of I'll-never-get-to-sleep, where faint noises (not traffic – something electrical? an air conditioner a block away?) and the pillow, which is only blessedly cool for a moment when you change to another part of it, create a space of awareness where time stops, and your whole life, mind, imagination are suddenly seen as contingent decisions, as things that actually didn't need to go the way that they did.

I've had many nights that are technically like that; many of them acutely uncomfortable (stomach problems, mostly), or some that were worried (I don't, fortunately, tend to be wakeful in anxious circumstances – good thing, I suppose; instead I stay asleep as long as I can, to avoid them). However, this one was somewhat different, and had instead a resonance with other kinds of nights that are rarer: where I really seem to see everything as an accident, and vaguely wonder how it could all be made different. Where my whole life seems to be a story – and therefore, of course, a story that could have been told differently.

The night that I was reminded of last night: at some point – when would it have been? – we were in New Hampshire for a cousin's wedding, and I was put upstairs in the front room of my grandmother's apartment, along with a handsome red-headed sailor. Impossible to sleep; and impossible to not be aware of this man (I was pretty young – late teens, early twenties? – and acutely disoriented by how close he was, and how attractive he was). A very long night, with I'm sure passionate dreams (now pretty faded or forgotten); but also with a broader awareness of myself in time (made more acute because of the relative narrowness of the house, of the time-scale, of the space-scale, of the area where the Greek side of the family lives – it was always so disturbing for me to imagine myself in a smaller town like this one).

I suppose the normal responses to such a thing are: well, one can't feel that way all the time, if one did one wouldn't get anything done at all. (Which might explain why I get so little done, at all.) Or: that's existential angst, and then you try to figure it out by reading and discussing. (Hmm. Feh.) But I suppose I want something that would touch on my long, close relationship with fantasy, with ideas of science fiction and magic and such – that somehow, if I really can see my life whole, that it could be changed, either retroactively or at least from this point forward.

Today, I was continuing to read Bender's Sandman Companion, where he runs through synopses and details of Gaiman's wonderful Sandman series. (I first read the Sandman books this winter, at Vanessa's instigation – and was surprised to realize that they are indeed extremely good, and very much to my taste.) When Bender launched into an explanation of The Kindly Ones, book 9 of the series, I abruptly became very, well, avoidant – in a way that has been very familiar over the past five years or so: when any novel, story, television drama, reaches the point where terrible things are happening and everyone has to cope with them, I shut down and become unwilling to read/see any more.

Wimpy, I know, but there you are. Although I've always been a bit like that, it was never as bad as it is now, since the Australian debacle. A weakness in the area of dealing with disaster – frankly, all of Aristotle's catharsis theories seem beside the point; or perhaps, more accurately, after one has been through several disasters, the 'created' disasters of fiction don't seem like any fun. At all. (Incidentally, this is probably why I like CSI and Law and Order so much these days – the really terrible stuff happens at the beginning, quickly, and then most of the show is taken up with calmly figuring out what happened, and of course with retribution.)

In The Kindly Ones, many terrible things happen; things that have been made inevitable by various decisions and mistakes strewn through the previous eight books. Change happens – big change, with finality – and a whole relative stasis, where big things return to normal after everything gets a bit messed about, vanishes. Brilliant, but difficult for me to stomach: perhaps the greatest mercy of this book is the speed with which everything happens – you can see it coming, and then it does, and then there's nothing to do but think about the aftermath.

Terrible things happening: yes, I know, These Things Happen To Teach Us, etc. So many people around me are going through difficult times, transitions, trials – C–, P–, V–, and others I'm sure. I know: I should be more willing to be the confidante, the helper, a supporting player in other people's dramas, but even that seems emotionally tiring. Maybe I'm just at a stage – or perhaps more accurately, at the end of a stage – where I'm tired of things happening, and can't deal with them or learn from them. Wanting stasis; wanting time to slow down; wanting a relatively simple, daily approach to life....

Awakening II

I wake abruptly into a dark space, responding to some dull sound, some impact, I can only sense the aftershock. I do not know where I am, a flat, low bed, no light, I reach out clumsily to find a switch, any switch: light, music, electric shocks, trying to find a way of altering the room’s energy, of adding to the available light. I want to call out names, requests for reassurance, but stop myself, afraid of unwelcome answers, or of no answer. Increasingly frantic, I knock things off a flat space near the bed: something small and hard that rolls across the floor, and what sounds like a pile of papers. I pull myself from the strange bed, feet tangled in the dark with sheets, thick blankets, I pull and stand, my left foot is still held, and I fall head first into something hard. Dazzled by rich pains, sitting on the floor, legs, thighs still imprisoned in cloth. My hand holds my forehead in place against the pain that tries to explode it outward. Where is everyone, why am I alone, what is this place? Hard surfaces and no light. Though my sensations still have a bright, sticky glaze of pain, I stagger upright and disentangle myself from the sheets. Moving through the dark, hands in front of me, wooden doors that open with clothing behind them; further along, something hung on the wall, that falls with a crash when I knock it sideways; and another door, with a handle, great relief to find it is unlocked. Opened to reveal a dark hall, a glimmer of blue light at one end, I can barely see it through the orange haze on the side of my circle of vision, from where I fell. Moving toward the blue, I see it is a window let into a door, dim street lights beyond the shabby curtains, spotted panes. I turn the knob and push, it must be bolted, someone has locked me in, I yank at it in frustration, it gives way when I pull. I stumble down a couple of dirty concrete steps to pavement, still barely able to focus through the orange haze, but this street, these buildings, I know them somehow. I realize I am standing outside in chilly air with only a flimsy armless undershirt; it has holes in it as though someone has worn it for a long time. I stumble back past the door, and find a light switch: a kitchen, shabby, dirty dishes piled up, the reek of onions, cabbages, who would live like this? and why have I been brought here? But I have seen something like this before, and I turn off the light and walk the creaking boards back to the first room, the one where I woke, and the dream is fading quickly now, a flash of bronzed flesh, the great house and gardens, the sound of kindly laughter, it’s all going away, and as I find the light switch for the bedroom, I, filled with dread, see the trap: this is my room, I went to sleep here, and nothing has changed.

[Los Angeles, 6/13-7/27/90]

¡Scorchio!

Evening: baked earth giving heat back to the sky....

I keep thinking of my relationship to heat, to summer and sun; linked of course with my usual wondering about my relationship with productivity, with writing, with aging, with feeling well, with being happy, with the many other versions of my life I can imagine, and the other places I can imagine experiencing them. And even linked with my skin and hair, which are better because of the heat, or perhaps are not.

Somewhere between relaxation and exhaustion, between well-being and debility...

***

later at night: when really cool breezes start floating in the windows. I'd love to get acclimatized to the hotter life, and figure out how to live in it....

Think about other, remembered, heats: since I don't have a particularly good memory, this won't be every one of forty-nine summers. (Hmm, After Forty-Nine Summers Dies the Swan – no, not a very good title, except perhaps for a rather unsuccessful crime novel.) One: Los Angeles, early 1990s; when I wrote several sad, rather aimless pieces; the scratchy tweed couch in the summer sunshine, all suffused with too much lying around in my bathrobe, having finally finished my master's thesis, wondering whether I was going to die soon or should start on my PhD dissertation, wondering if I should move back to San Francisco, wondering if I should.

Another: the August week in Crete, I was really and truly not well: I went virtually for a respite, and Kunsu and Gerhard took such great care of me. Was that really just last summer?

Barcelona, a dazzling sense of endless folding shuttered doors designed for the heat. Gran Canaria, a week baking in the sun.

As for here in northern England, although I've lived here nearly four years now, I don't have strongly charged memories of what summer feels like. Much of that is probably because we rarely have such powerful heat – but there is also the strangeness of the past two (was it two? again, memory blurs) summers, where, because I was ill for different reasons (thyroid leading to endless sleep, that was the most recent), I didn't really experience the summer except as a time when nobody bothered me....

Can the cheap thermometer in my alarm clock really be right? Is it really almost 80° in my bedroom? That is either wonderful or annoying... and it's too hot to really care which it is....