(2:30 p.m. PDT update: Los Angeles breaks all-time high temperature record at 113. Since records have been kept, there has never been a hotter day in L.A. And you thought I was imagining it.)
Here we are, Angelinos and more distant correspondents, stewing, toasting under a sun that seems to have moved closer.
Questions arise: are we in the crucible of transformation? Is weather that turns us witless meant to cleanse the mind like the refreshing sorbet I'd rather have?
On the heels of equinox and the full moon of whatever description you care to use (Pointy Stick Moon, Body Dysmorphia Moon, Moon of Vanished Motivation, Weasels Ripped My Flesh Moon, Couldn't You Just SCREAM Moon and Moon of Who Ate All the Leftover Pasta), anyone entirely comfortable in their skin and head should be lighting candles and offering platters of expensive, out-of-season fruit to gods known and unknown.
What sort of ill-signposted path does it take for one to become lost so easily? I will blame it on the heat - triple-digit temperatures are up to mischief, check your numerology...or just step outside. All I know is that the way ahead seemed open, free of treacherous debris and now, I feel as though I tripped the secret panel in the old library and have been spun into a state of WTF?
If this evaporates (likely for most substances, given the lack of humidity) when the heat wanes, I will have identified the source. But if, when the air cools, I am still here in the cobwebby backside of shelves filled with annotated works, a chamber dim and soundproof, and if Abbot and Costello or a Nancy Drew nemesis are sitting in my favorite chair, please send someone with finely developed investigative skills to let me out. Send a team, Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law would do nicely. They may even leave their shirts on.
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14 comments:
Marylinn,
I'm feeling something very similar to this today. how strange.
Very isolated, very dusty, bleary-eyed and suddenly very still and stuck. I'm unsure of how to get out other than the days keep coming and something about a new day can change things.
I like your moon who ate all the leftover pasta. If it was good pasta- what a jerk. If it was bad, old pasta - better the moon than you.
Rachel - Do you think for reasons we haven't been told that we are hyper-sensitive right now? I am completely willing to blame my shifting state on the heat but it feels more complicated than that, though the heat picks me up like a cyclone and drops me any old place.
I think one foot in front of the other, await further instructions and, in the much larger picture, see if we may actually find something to our advantage in another of our in-betweens.
It was good pasta but I had failed to leave the moon a note, a reminder to us all. And you may require time to process and decompress from your pithy excursion. For those of us who stayed in place, I'm not sure what it means.
I think for me it was a sudden jolt back to reality. There's that word again - reality. To not escaping the problems that you felt you could escape and for a week I had. But it never lasts like you would like it to and I wonder why that is. Why we live in a world so content with unhappiness? I myself am a part of it. Why can't we do what makes us happy sometimes? It seems like a contradiction.
I'm not sure what it is, but I do know that whatever it was/is has been waiting for me all along. I never escaped anything, I just got a vacation from it.
Sometimes it feels so much harder to say what you need. I wish it were easier. that people, the moon, the air could know and that would be that.
I'm bad with my speaking voice. Much better with my written voice. I wish I was better with both.
I'm not certain this applies to LA, but the Geek in me attributes fall apprehension to an evolutionary instinct to gather and store whatever food we can to survive the winter. In a months time I will be reminded of winter; nothing like the sound of obese squirrels trying unsuccessfully to scrabble across rooftops.
But the "Furian in me..." wants to fly south. Often wondered whether migrating ducks aren't yelling: "GET ME OUT OF HERE!"
Wow, Ugh!
The news wires have been popping with accounts of the heat wave in California. Up here in Oregon it is unseasonably warm; we expect 80 degrees when the clouds burn off. Nice.
But in all this plethora of media coverage, not one of them alluded to any "cause" for this heat. Is it that "Global Climate Change" aka "Global Warming" is a POLITICAL concept and the mere mention of it tilts a view toward one party or another?
I often wonder if there were people on the Titanic who insisted the ship was unsinkable as the water lapped around their ankles.
Robert,
I'm not sure if it is poor blog etiquette to comment on another person's comment when it is not my blog. If so, my apologies to Marylinn for the unintentional hijacking. (It's time that I create my own blog it would seem. But I truly enjoy Marylinn's thought provoking writing skills and the responses from this group).
Of course we are affecting the weather: "unseasonably hot", "unseasonably cold" are just the beginning, unless we do something fast. Without boring anyone, it has to do with how we are affecting ocean currents. When we experienced the depletion of the ozone layer, governments acted fast and swiftly, because there was nothing to be gained from frying to death.
The scientific community has known about the global warming trend for at least 40 years. Dismissed as fringe science, until profiteers could no longer hide the facts. Besides the financial gain from oil, watch for the severe battle by several countries that is about to ensue over the golden "opportunity" of the NORTHWEST PASSAGE, liberated after thousands of years from it's pesky ice...It's a conspiracy until it turns out to be true. Sad.
They anticipate 90 degree weather here in Utah in October - some kind of record.
TO MY SPLENDID COMMENTERS;
I will respond by tomorrow at the latest, maybe this evening. The heat and I are not very good friends and I have been nearly witless.
I have no sense of hijacking and welcome dialogue. I have always found the visitors here to be thoughtful, informed and respectful. And dialogue is essential when the subject is - why pretend - a matter of life and death. Keep those cards and letters coming, please. Love, Marylinn
Rachel - I'm not sure who among us does not wish they were, as I define it, more precise, completely without a margin for misunderstanding, in what they say or write. Wouldn't that be sweet? I have come to learn that happiness is a choice, often made in the face of daunting evidence that unhappiness is the indicated state. For me it may involve finding good that I take for granted - breathing, waking up, food in the fridge, loving people in my life - and speaking gratitude out loud. It helps me remember. If we live, mostly, from one second to the next - sometimes a day seems too long to hold out - generally within each succeeding second we are, well, still here. For all the reasons, valid and "real" we may have to allow ourselves to be unhappy, we also have cause for joy and appreciation. You know if this was as easy as I perhaps make it sound, everyone would do it. It requires mindfulness and recognizing that we may backslide. I have found it worth the effort. At least it is an option to consider. xoxo
Artist and Geek - As most of my life has been spent in snow-free climes, I have never had an apprehension about the coming of autumn and winter. My one East Coast winter began in January, it was already under way when I arrived, and it certainly taught me about watching for the smallest indication of spring. Just as I know I was never intended to be part of a submarine crew, nor was I designed to shovel snow, drive on ice, be seriously prepared for a long siege of blizzard conditions. Even living in relative winter warmth, I sometimes think flying south isn't a bad idea. Mostly, I am a fan of moderate weather, which came and spoiled us Angelinos for much of the summer. I hope your dual natures resolve themselves before the first front. :-)
Laoch - No kidding, though you have the heat AND humidity there as a summer treat. Late Wednesday we had thunder, lightening, some rain and (for us) humidity. We will just call it all peculiar and hope it is not a portent.
Robert - Now a balmy 80 is a gift when the temperature ought to be falling. Yet I imagine you have started to see fall color and seasonal produce stands. And you are right, I heard no one even speculate about the roaring, record heat's possible cause..."a high pressure system..." as though they just pop up for no reason. However, those of us old-timers know that October can easily be our hottest month. But 113? Please.
And I suspect there were a few aboard the Titanic who had trouble processing the information that its publicity was ill-informed. Politicizing every aspect of life becomes so tedious...global warming and the fact that men did NOT walk with dinosaurs belong to us all. They are our story and we're stuck with them.
Artist and Geek - With open season on the Northwest Passage, have they found benefits in Kilimanjaro's shrunken glaciers?
I know that our planet has experienced extremes of climate over its lengthy existence, when we weren't here to be held accountable. But the clear cause and effect of our drastic shifts really can't be waved away with phrases like, "You liberals, you green do-gooders..." I'm sure the profiteers still dismiss it all as fringe science, forgetting, it seems, that no matter how much money they accrue, they still have to live here, too.
I am of the school (with no apologies to Imelda Marcos) that we can only wear one pair of shoes at a time. How much money is enough? Someone needs to tell them this isn't a contest, it is, depending on one's beliefs, our only ride on this teacup. How much more fun it would be if truth triumphed over lies and resources were evenly and fairly allocated.
Please, talk amongst yourselves.
Kass - With a forecast of unnaturally high temperatures, do they offer any explanation? Our flame-thrower Monday seemed not to appear on the radar too far in advance; in fact it didn't appear at all until it was here. As I am often heard to ask, what does it all mean? I'm not sure I want to listen for the answer.
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