summer

i once read a description of the weather here as dithering a one-bit system; in short, we only experience winter or summer, with daily or hourly fluctuations during transitional periods that average out to a more mild season.

today, our house lost power, briefly, and we suspect thousands of air conditioning units simultaneously switching on as the culprit. years ago, my parents and i stayed at a mid-atlantic beach house that similarly lost power during a sudden heat wave, so we decamped to a resort village down the street and pretended to care about luxury fur purses in order to cool off in their emergency generator-fed climate control systems.

year after year, i grow steadily more unhappy with the realization that my neighbors running their air conditioning makes my building hotter. sometimes i walk through alleyways of window units tetrised around each other, each one quivering with the strain of ripping heat out of one side and pushing heat into the other. hot breath, hot breath, in each other's faces. trash drawn in catches thermals and float into the sky; birds pluck them out and tuck those waxy sandwich wrappers into their own nests.

i don't need to read about dystopian nightmares anymore.

02 May 2018 22:38