The Assemblagist

The heat causes lunacy.

Sun­shine and clouds mixed. Very hot. Heat index near 110F. High near 100F. Winds WSW at 10 to 20 mph.

Truly… and to prove my insan­ity, let me copy/​paste my Sun­day morn­ing email mes­sage to dear Mary in Arkansas:

Every­one needs to make a flux case. Old fish­ing tackle boxes make great flux cases, espe­cially when com­bined with lit­tle plas­tic lure cases.

We ven­tured out in heat yes­ter­day to go to movie in Gville (30 min drive) Arrived after movie began so we went to Sam’s to buy stuff until next show­ing. Got out of Sam’s around 5:30 and AC in car stopped work­ing. We drove across town to the­ater, not more than a 10 minute drive, and inter­nal temp (volvo ther­mome­ter in dash) reported 120 degrees — win­dows down and sun blar­ing down on us. Good­god­fuck­inglo­rdalmighty. I thought I was going to have a stroke. And it seems the wave is going to continue

and what sucks even more is Volvo dealer is in Wilm­ing­ton (we got car there) near Rob’s mom, and we have to take car in for some kind of fuel pump recall and they can fix the fuse to the dash­board fan that is the root of AC prob­lem and that means

no AC in the car until we can get Volvo appt. and we are sched­uled to take boys to Durham to Lemur cen­ter on Tues­day. We have old Dodge van (aptly licensed plate’d — The Mule — on it) and AC works but dri­ving it over 100 miles in this kind of heat might not be a good idea.… and on and on about how the heat THE FUCKING HEAT is mak­ing us crazy.

Oh, and INCEPTION
ABSOLUTELY FUCKING AWESOME MOVIE GO SEE IT if you haven’t already GO GO GO. Inception’s glory stems from its abil­ity to not get lost in its own logic. I hate most movies because I find the hic­cup, the “no one would think or act that way” in the mid­dle of the plot and it destroys the show … I had no logic hic­cup in Incep­tion. Of course, like Shut­ter Island, Leo is bound — I think by some kind of strange par­al­lel uni­verse coup — to star only in movies which appeal to my MY per­sonal sense of logic…

I’m on couch with dog in lap, it’s hard to type so I leave off whole words and sen­tences so sorry but hell…

Today’s high is 100 (not heat index, the temp) and it’s already 96 at 11:20 am.

GOD DAMN AMERICA AND HER DEPENDENCE ON OIL AND AIR CONDITIONING.

ha. As Rob says, “What are we sup­posed to do, open the win­dows?” Okay, time for another cup of coffee.

I am send­ing you this email as proof that I am the same per­son I was 35+ years ago. I never needed any arti­fi­cial stim­uli to ram­ble on about lit­tle of sig­nif­i­cance… and back then I had not dis­cov­ered caffeine.

How ever did we sur­vive in the early 70s? How did we do it? I mean, pot made us laugh and stay in one loca­tion, no social net­work­ing other than “Hey!” when some­one came in the room, and “Turn it up” when a par­tic­u­larly promis­ing gui­tar riff began on stereo…

Now it’s the odd­est thing to be mid-​50s, isn’t it? Do you look in the mir­ror and won­der who you see? How did I get here? When I have no mir­ror, I go about my day as I always have — it’s such a shock to catch a glimpse of the grand­sons hold­ing my hand as I walk past a store win­dow — who is that limp­ing middle-​aged frump with those two adorable boys? wow, she needs a make-​over…

enough, ram­ble now thrown back to you — oh friend — ten­nis? in this heat? are you fuck­ing nuts?

–V

c