Right now we have an air-conditioner in our closet collecting dust when the last few nights in my small bedroom have been gruelingly muggy and stifling; when two nights ago I had to use an ice pack from the freezer to sleep with just to have a chance to sleep--which I did by 5am.
Before you think I have come down with a special kind of madness or are the victim of a delusional embolism, or just a glutton for punishment, you should know it is part of my approach to Summer; to want to experience it the way it used to be experienced--which includes uncomfortable moments and annoyingly unrelenting heat waves. My aims are noble and healthy I tell myself but hotdamn last night was a suffering too-long sauna in moist sheets. Granted I had two cheap electric fans whizzing quietly but these seemed only to blow around more hot hair. A joke as it were--on me. For of course people 'experienced' summer without electric fans for thousands of years as well as air-conditioners; (though there are several examples through out history of attempts at cooling housing interiors going back to the ancient Romans.)
Who cares. Back to the topic at hand. What is the topic? Sweat beads fall onto the keyboard as I type this. How long shall I hold out? In 1965 only 10% of U.S. households had air conditioning. By 2007 the number was up to 86%. (This is one reason jobs have been more plentiful in, and people have moved to, the south for the last few decades in the U.S.) Still, I forge on without Air-Conditioning. What a trooper.
They say the crime rate in New York City has gone down drastically from where it was at in the 1970's and 80's and experts have several reasons for this, but I think part of it has to do with people got air-conditioning on a mass scale in a short period of time. Really. Oh, what feverish torments await me tonight? Last night for a snack I had mouthfuls of hot air. Not tasty. Lake Erie is too far away. Even sleeping in the nude doesn't feel good. This is no complaint tangent. These are fevered musings in a small solitary room in the depths of July. An inner voice yells, 'Then go outside!' But I don't really hear it 'cause I instead passed out in a pool of my own sweat and misguided notions of 'experiencing summer'. Cheers.
