Summer 2011

I felt good last night but couldn't sleep.  I woke and thought dreams, stretched and rolled and felt the million thread count sheets against me.  It was the solstice, the shortest night of the year.  I finally got up at 4:30 feeling fine.  Odd, though, that the cat did not come running as she usually does.

"Ou etes-vous," I whispered, but nothing.  Did I leave her out when I went to bed I wondered?

I saw an ambulance drive slowly by my house in the darkness.  Somewhere in the muddled folds of my brain I thought of something.  Perhaps it is for me, I thought.  They are looking for me, going slowly, in no hurry.  That is why the cat isn't here.  I'm dead.

But it pulled up to a neighbors house where a more probable candidate lives.

"This time," I said to myself, feeling for the fellow, hoping it turned out O.K. for him.  The cat lazily brushed against my leg.

It is awful to want to live, I thought, or rather, to be saddened by the other.

I tend to remember equinoxes more than solstices.  The solstice brings summer and fun. . . at first.  But summers get brutal here and so what follows at first are beaches and summer love, but then it is disaster warnings and shattered nerves, afternoon storms and worn passions.  Being merely cordial in August is almost impossible.  Read your Faulkner.

I wake this morning a new man--someone with an iPhone.  I have given in, allowed myself to be seduced.  It was nothing, like losing your virginity, I think.  It is difficult at first but you keep thinking you will learn to enjoy it.

Q and the prodigal girl both sent things to my phone yesterday.  Otherwise, it would be like my other phone, silent until I got a call from my mother.  But getting photos and texts were--dare I say it--fun.  It is Q's old phone, and he says I will want a new one soon.  And he is right for one reason.  I want the video camera on the new iPhones.  They art truly awesome.  And the 8mm app--well, I have phone envy.  But I've gone from 0 to 1,000 texts/month in 3.5 seconds.

So it is summer.  I have a 21st century phone.  Both the cat and I are still alive.  The sun is coming up and I feel like getting outside.  With apologies to the neighbor, out with the old and in with the new.  I'll book flights to NYC and San Fran today.  It is time for a little summer fun.