Rainfogmist

The season hasn't changed, but it's bunching up, tensing to pounce. Like a cat, it may well just get bored, or distracted, and wander off again, leaving us the heat and dry air for another while. The light is backing away, not so insistent in the early morning, turning in earlier in the evening, but still fiercely hot in the afternoon. Very hard to get used to this big, long, stomping summer after the obnoxious, but lackadaisical summers of my Michigan childhood. Green and oppressive, miserable and heavy, but usually damply tardy, and often left early in a huff.

These desert summers always feel too strong, tyrannical and lingering. A boring relative who won't stop shouting, and won't shut up. Autumn will be most welcome. A good rain would be wonderful. What I wouldn't do for some good east coast rain/fog/mist.

The year I spent without a winter, having been sent to Saudi Arabia at the behest of the US government, threw me off balance until the next winter. Some of my disorientation simply explained by the disruption in my location and possible lack of future, but I could feel that the lack of a few months of cold with low light unlinked me from my sense of time. Like jet lag, only on a larger scale.

In Boston, the winters seemed long enough. Some deep part of my soul craved those kinds of winters. Proofing, challenging, a climate to push against. In a way searing heat doesn't, not for this northerner.

Moby seems brighter, more engaged, odder, as the light changes. He was a velcro cat last night, staying on my ankles despite my movements. He's been staring out the windows this morning. Saw a dog walking by, all tense and wary, slunk inside as the dog passed, then curled back around, stared out from the balcony, and made sure dog had kept going.

Maybe he's just waiting for the boxes to come out, and they keep not appearing. No, not moving this year.