I had considered writing about other things today, but there has just been no escaping the heat lately, and so here you are. Heat. It has been brutally hot here where I live almost every day in July and many days in June. The grass is drying up. Even the onions and things I never wanted in my flower bed are burning to a crisp. Hallelujah! Go, onions! Begone, ugly weeds! I suppose if you wait long enough the thing that’s bothering will eventually change or go away.
And I suppose we’d have to say that is true of excessive heat, too. Tomorrow we expect a high of 78. Woohoo!!
Still, I have been longing to be elsewhere. The Great Lakes, Maine, Cornwall, Aruba–all of these places call my name and yet I cannot manage to get to any of them. Evil people mercilessly post photos of their gorgeous beach vacations, day after day. Ugh. I have to practice lovingkindness very, very hard for them. “May you be happy.” At your magnificent beach.
I walk my dogs and play pickleball outdoors as early in the day as possible, then waste away, melted, until the next morning. Old Lady. I might as well stuff a hanky into the neckline of my flowered dress and carry a fan.
I belong to two online artist communities on Facebook, both based in the UK. Granted, they’ve just had their hottest day on record and it was a really hot one. But a couple of weeks earlier, when it was in the upper 90s here and 100% humidity, one of those lovely British artists was whingeing (see what I did there?) about the “searing” heat of 28 degrees Celsius. I looked it up. 82 Fahrenheit! 82!! I would have given my hanky and fan for that!
Just goes to show that all things are relative. And yes, I’m aware that all things do change, as well, and we’ll be griping about the ice, come February.
A way of dealing with this is to think about what we do have. I, for example, do have central air. Very lucky. I have indoor activities that I love, like painting, writing, reading, and eating out. Oh, wait. I don’t eat out because of Covid. Okay, I have many pairs of shorts and sleeveless tops, clean water to drink, and a bathtub. I have watermelon. I have television, for those wrung out, splayed across the couch evening hours. I really am lucky. I know this.
Even so, I really, really, really, really want to be gazing at, sitting at the edge of, or actually in a very large body of water. Right now. Poopoo.
“If there’s a single lesson that life teaches us, it’s that wishing doesn’t make it so.”― Lev Grossman, The Magicians
“Sometimes things become possible if we want them bad enough.” ― T.S. Eliot
“Because there’s nothing more beautiful than the way the ocean refuses to stop kissing the shoreline, no matter how many times it’s sent away.” ― Sarah Kay
If you’re looking for my cards or art, you’ll find all of that on my website. And if you enjoy these letters, feel free to forward this one to anyone you think might like it. And if someone forwarded this one to you, you can sign up here to receive the letters right in your Inbox. Finally, you’ll find past letters and poems here on my blog.
Thanks for listening,
Kay
P.S. MerryThoughts is the name of my first book, out of print at the moment. The word is a British one, referring both to a wishbone and to the ritual of breaking the wishbone with the intention of either having a wish granted or being the one who marries first, thus the “merry thoughts.”
