It’s roasting in San Francisco, sweltering in our apartment. In twenty minutes I’ll be sprawled in Dolores Park consuming smelly cheeses and clandestine beer, but in the meantime I’m here, absorbed in studying the way I abandon myself to this heat.
I sit with one leg curled under me, the other bent against my chest, one arm resting on the desk, one wrapped around a leg. Folded like this, as complex as fine origami, I am able to study from nearly all angles my body’s fascinating obedience to the weather. I have sweat behind the knees, errant hairs falling limp from my up-do onto the back of my neck, and a gradual loosening of all tension in my limbs. A hot day is a sauna, a stylist and a massage all in one.
“You are affected by the weather more than anyone I know,” Maggie once wrote to me. She’s quite right. I can feel the heat of the day ready to bear me up like a giant palm; I feel I could fall backwards and it would catch me. On a day like this, I could jump out my window and stick in the air like a cherry caught in a jello mold.
I am almost sorry (but not really) to be meeting friends and beers in the park. Heat like this is too solemn to be social.
On the other hand, smelly cheese!
