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It’s been a week now since the news came down that one of my colleagues at the paper, Diane, had died of bile duct cancer. She found out about 3 weeks prior and it was too late. Single and 42, she was in the process of trying to adopt a child from China, and had a self-help book for women dealing with stalkers coming out soon. I can’t say that I knew her incredibly well, yet I found myself incredibly moved, disturbed, distraught over the news. Although it sounds a bit cliche, I guess events do come around with some frequency that throw you on your head, with sorrow, doubt, confusion, analysis etc. Viewing my life through the lens of what I now know about Diane’s, and her early demise, has led to some severe existential dilemmas that cut across all parts of my life: work, romance, happiness and it’s pursuit, the future, the past…
But a week that began with such bad news could surely not continue in such a way. This was also the week that Barry Bonds would tie Hank Aaron’s home run record, A-Rod would hit his 500th home run, and in the waning hours of the week that began for me last Monday, Tom Glavine would get his 300th career win.
It was also the week that I would spend every night trying to finish the never-ending freelance project that seems to grow every time I touch it. It was a week without therapy, a week on new medication, and a week that I ended in Chattanooga where I finally saw Rock City, hated my way through the Incline Railroad again, and got my beard trimmed at the minor league baseball game, during the 6th inning, right before the hometown team lost and we would receive Sara Lee 100% Honey Wheat bread loaves while exiting the stadium.

It’s the summer of the wine cooler, of hiding something in a way that someone specific will find it, and the summer of keeping a secret that you will carry to your grave. It’s the summer of the dead wrestler and his dead family, and the summer that you stopped watching wrestling, and that we finally lost the rest of our childlike innocence, and that we found other childlike innocence, and the summer that we stopped and started talking, and that the heat rose from the street and straight up my trousers and took us all a little closer to the stars when it was night, and the clouds when it was day. It’s the summer of the homeless woman on a pre-paid roundtrip to Chicago, and the summer in which the Cubs may make it to the post-season, and the summer of baseball in general, and the summer in which I will gain and lose 20 pounds. It’s the summer in which the dreams will not stop, painting dreams, and fluorescent light tube dreams, and dreams of a conspiracy of women, and of multi-million dollar contracts. It’s the summer of the hyphen, and the end of history. It’s the summer of rapture, and rapturous living, and dangerous life, and winning when you didn’t even try. It’s the summer of saying goodbye. It’s the summer of the witness, and death penalty, and heart sinking, and rising, and sinking, and rising. It’s the summer of cordial women, and turning Muslim, and wanting more, and being Zen, and indie rock, and Canada. It’s the summer that Rick Bass began, the summer of the run-on sentence, the summer that makes no more sense than last season, the summer in which this city will eat your little cooked body, the summer when your body was cooked. It’s the summer of ladies in 70’s hair styles, and the summer of shave pubis, the summer of clutter, and repetition, and repetition, and saying the same thing over, but refusing to live it over, and over, and over, and refusing to live it. It’s the summer of living, forgetting that thoraxic schism,and it’s the summer of walking away, eating this city, and never looking back.

So this is the real summer in this city. There is not the solitude that allows for the solitude. That allows for introspection every night. There’s the crazy summerness of the Southern existence, like Carson McCullers, Flannery O’Conner, and other crazy heat-stricken ladies with various talents.
I have spent the night praying to clothing and the lack of and the way that clothing makes certain things and can ruin others. This is the nature of the city. Nothing is laid bare, nothing is truthful on the surface. Everything takes an extra level of interpretation.
In Summer, in this place, things turn rotten. Corpses rise from the depths of bodies of water and surface and create a narrative that will change this city a little for a few moments.
Desire overcomes us boys in the city at this time of the year, and we know not where to aim our compasses. There’s nothing that pulls completely. There’s just the Summer. There’s just the crazy lumpy ladies. There’s just desire. And it burns hotter than summer. It burns hotter than expectation. It gets under your skin and we’ll take your mind away from all that you need to get done in this pre-Independence Day heat.
Play a Sousa tune and light a Roman candle. Tonight is lonely and secure and will come to be a good memory for me if I allow myself to wait.

It’s 1 AM and I have now been awake for 39 hours straight for a reason that involves zip codes and home sale prices and that’s about all that is worth mentioning. What I have is not exactly synesthesia, but I do have an acutely aware sense of smell, especially of those things that are on the not so pleasing end of the sensory scale. I keep smelling bad flatulence, cat piss, rotting corpses…
I am starting to think of this like some of my friends think of detox diets, lemonade fasts, confession, etc. It’s been years since I last stayed up all night, and that time it was writing and recording a bad song. This time it was a bad map. But I do feel like I a resetting my clock. Tonight was one of my most relaxed in recent memory. I felt like most of the synapses were firing properly, so I went to see a baseball game. The boys of summer in this here town put up numbers that would have won all of their recent scoreless games.
I stepped into a pile of melting summer bubble gum today that is still collecting gravel on my out-of-season boots.
I should learn how to dress better for this weather.
The words “I love you” can save a life.
I will sleep like a baby tonight.

Today was one of those go to the Korean market and get a ham sandwich and eat at your desk type days at work.
I am working on the zip code delineated home sales data map and apparently the data is not mean prices, but median prices, and you cannot do an accurate weighted average of median data. I had to google the difference because I could not quite extract that one from the catacombs of my brain. I used to be a designer, now I am becoming, reluctantly, something else.
So I go to the Korean market and feel that the humidity is down so the low nineties don’t feel like they will later on this Summer. Outside the market there are two semi-homeless white guys talking about what to buy and they decide upon an Icehouse and a pack of Rave cigarettes. I know the Icehouse trick from baseball games, as cheap as the other beers but with more kick, but you will find it kicking you in the head in the morning, but I figure living in this moment is probably what these guys want. It’s probably what I would want if I were in their shoes as well.
So I find myself in line behind the one of them sent to procure the goods in the market, and upon hearing his total, he begins digging vigorously in his sock, partially removing his shoe, and produces several singles and probably three dollars in coins. I wondered how he was able to walk. I wondered was this one of the safe ways of the street. Then I wondered if it were a best practice, why would they not just take your shoes and socks and look for the money after kicking your ass out on the street, or down in the parking lot under the bridge at night.
I guess my homeless guy, the one I paid my alms to on Fridays, has been killed or arrested or found another stomping ground. He never made it to this Summer with me.
It’s hard for me to imagine whether I would prefer Summer or Winter if I were living on the streets here. If you were lucky, in Winter, you would find enough cover to make you warm on most nights. In Summer, sometimes, you cannot take off enough to make you cool though. I don’t really know. At least you can sleep in heat, but if freezing you are wired.
I am not too sure about this city today. I am not too sure about my job today. On the other hand, I feel pretty good about me. I have found myself, however, starting to wonder what those first few days of the real Fall, when you can put on a sweater, will feel like. I need to get these thoughts out of my head, lest I be miserable for months to come. It hasn’t even really heated up in this city.