AbsurdBeats

I may have mentioned once or twice my. . . displeasure with summer.

Displeasure, hah! Fear, loathing, hatred—you know, the normal responses to sun and heat.

But fall, ah, blissful fall: crisp air, brisk winds, long nights, prelude to winter and all its bluster.

Who could hate the impending onset of weather which chases you down the street and into your apartment? Which welcomes your boots and mittens, gives way to your willingness to test yourself against its cold?

Winter: time of laughter and ease.

Unlike summer, which teases you outside and seduces you into believing the sun is your friend. The sun is not. It tolerates you in June, turns contemptuous in July, and, along with its collaborator, humidity, tries to kill you in August. The only way to survive is to hunker down in a dark space in front of a fan or air conditioner.

Winter respects its denizens; summer mocks them.

What set off this (rather pedestrian) reverie? The heat in the apartment has kicked in.

I don’t even have radiators, but the steam knocks so horribly in the bathroom pipe that it’ll wake me up—and has already freaked out Jasper. (Bean, used to noisy heat, barely stirs in her sleep.) Still, the sound signals the onset of warmth, the invitation to cozy up with. . .all right, I don’t have a companion, but a book or a cat. With a whiskey.

Waiiiit a minute, you might ask: You spent how many words bitching about the heat of summer, how it traps you inside, and here you are rhapsodizing over. . . indoor heat?

You’re clearly missing the point. It’s about an attitude, a set of possibilities, of the ability to carry one’s warmth outside and thus the freedom to move about, unlike in summer’s tyranny, which makes no allowances for bringing the cool with you.

Oh, never mind. You’re a summer person, aren’t you?