[Yesterday was an incredible maelstrom of atmospheric fronts—the herald of the heatwave to come. I woke this morning in it. Hot and humid, already sticking. This is the weather linen was made for. My neighbors have been doing some sort of construction project every morning, starting the break of day with hammering, pounding, power sawing. The plants have been disgorging an otherworldly amount of yellow dust, covering everything. I wash surfaces to provide relief to our sweet allergic cat, only to find a fresh coating the next day. This too is summer, the season of excitement and wild abandon, aimless mating of every blossoming flower. I have been learning about carpenter bee families, how they will recognize you as kin should you not make efforts to expel them. They will greet you in the gardens, tell you of their day, and guard you from wasps and other undesirables. I am fast becoming fond of them, of their small, tightly-woven intergenerational dynamics. Meanwhile the bumblebees, who I have long adored, have grown to be more of a nuisance to me. Unlike carpenter bees, they form large underground hives and are more territorial and less social (at least to me). I make space for my evolving irritations, and leave the door open to unexpected fondnesses, and hope to rediscover my affection for the long beloved bumbles.] Received 6/18/2024 | 9:30pm
Listen to the Recitation:
PERSPIRATION EXPIRATION
The Heat Wave has arrived, pushing boiling points
To dew points, heat indices, by which they mean
"It's hot, and it will feel even hotter than it is."
What transpires in the dark is the great transpiration
Which delivers a seed ounce of consternation
In a hazy midafternoon. The forenoon yields
To an even greater beckoning, of habit's happenstance
On noon's bowled over edge, a dulled knife
Repeatedly gouging out anthills, damaging yards
And lawns, turning soil into sand. If the ants cannot
Coexist with the garden, they must go—! The queen
Must be exterminated. What a sour turn of mirror
Events; one small invasion yields a complete obliteration.
I too am this: a tyrant god armed with neutralizing
Poisons and nuclear options. What is triumph to others
Is travesty to me. And I will always protect my home;
My kin are closest to me. How arbitrary closeness is…
By what metric, by which velocity?
Waves are whole, and particles differentiated
Yet even particles are entangled, cross-contaminated
In the greater web of jewelled tones, ping ponging
Lyre string plucking, tugging upon substations
Of the Cross-wired circuit breakers. The air
Is so thick I can barely breathe, sweating oxygen
Into a melting world. When it is hot outside,
Do you leave the window open, or close it?
Permeable membranes to our increasing discomfort
Yet bringing with it a chance at reprieve,
A passing shift in ocean breeze, bearing
New salts, dehumidification, all-relieving
Inhospitability, the far screech cry of a gull
And a fog horn, baking in the high heat of the day.
We are all half baked, fully risen lest we fall again;
Not one of us knows the whole of what is happening—
Indeed, none of us do! How brazen of me;
Of course, we know well Zhuangzi's reminder:
"The minnows swim about so freely, following the openings
Wherever they take them. Such is the happiness of fish."
Companion Huizi replies, "You are not a fish, so whence
Do you know the happiness of fish?"
To which Zhuangzi famously responds,
"You are not I, so whence do you know I don't know
The happiness of fish?"
As I am not everyone, I cannot know that none know
The whole of what occurs; and yet I say: "None of us knows
The whole of what happens"! I am happy to say it,
As confidence is a critical juncture and passageway
To a less destitute now, to a more emboldened tomorrow.
I invite your brash sense of worth, your garishness,
Your arrogance, your boundless ignorance, to come
Out into the open, out into the playforum of malcontents
Where it couldn't be worse, and will never get better
And almost every good wonderful thing is impossible
And in dire straits. I am not looking to fix you, nor
Do I wish to be fixed by you. I wish for your eccentricity
To bound forth wildly, without shame, into the wide
Wildflower meadows, lined on all sides by grandmother
And grandfather willows, alders and aspens, ash
And oak, quaking and quivering and stoic and vast
And unrelenting in their holding, in their witnessing
Of all that is coming up in this hothothot heat, permeating
Fleshy membranes, dripping water into steaming air
A psychic sauna, purging out ever impure imperfect
Callous candor, warts and hives and pollen allergies
And mold — mold everywhere, of every breed,
In every corner, every surface, every furnishing and
Every wall coming down, no fence can keep us
From converging in concertitude, a banter of
Gallivants, errant fools and knight errands
From grocery lists and laundry days, the truth
Will come out, transpiring osmotic and filthy
Foul and fecund, bounteous harvest
The pears are ripe, ready to consume,
Consummation in the gnostic Bridal Chamber:
Henosis awaits even for us, the down and damaged
Worthless and paramount, leaning in to a faint promise
Of some all too possible potentiate, precipitation
Of perspiry, expiration of usury; the long-siloed
Shallows shall surface, minnows no longer, but
Amphibians, at ease in the heat, comfortable in the cold,
Lounging in sunlight and burrowing in muckdark,
Lotus roots and rescue pods
Following one another into the new day.