Heat
NoCal has different summer heat than the Midwest. Here, we have a limp, dry heat. It’s just heat. No drama, just hot.
Back home, you step outside, and especially if you come from the air conditioning, the heat grabs you, wraps itself around your body, and hugs you in a way that that can be erotic. The entire system works on this heat … the moisture enters the air, and heads toward the sun, collecting in to cumulonimbus clouds that combine with the blue sky and the orange to white light strokes of the sun to paint great bizarre works of mashed potato art on the sky for all to enjoy. They gather and gather and the sky goes dark and the water comes gushing down like the warm and sensuous tears of an emotional god, weeping that the crops will grow to feed her people, amongst thunderclap sobs emitted from prickly flashes of lightning.
Where Californians have nice Mountain Views, Flatlanders have Dramatic Skies and the catharsis of the Afternoon Downpour.
It has been rough on me, lately, to get used again to this dry heat. It is very pleasant to be outside, but I still have to carry a long-sleeved shirt with me because any time I’m indoors or on the bus the air conditioning makes me really chilly. It doesn’t help that in my line of work, one must occasionally spend some time in the conscientiously air-conditioned chill of machine rooms. Fortunately, my company has some nice long-sleeved shirts they give out for marketing purposes, so I can always find something to don if I have to go in the machine room for some work. When I get home the house feels way too hot, and dry, without the benefit of sunshine. Instead of kicking on the AC, we open up the windows and the door to get a cross-breeze going. Still, I need to get some fans . . . at least here it gets chilly at night, and one can sleep nestled beneath favorite blankets, where in the Midwest we were not strangers to the insomniac night sweat.
