Summer
I am writing this at 2:58 in the afternoon.
The sun radiates outside as it has for a week in a way that makes the verbs usually associated with subject sun useless. There is no shine, beam or coming out about it. It seems exactly what it is, an atomic reaction whose effects reach me. There has been no rain for some time now and everywhere is dust and cobwebs. The ongoing roof work next door contributes red dust from sawing the terra cotta tiles.
Today we have wind, too, dry and hot and sterile. Through the afternoon the birds fail to sing. The cats lie sprawled under bushes. Grass is not green , but tanned and knife-edged. Roses open and then dry on their stems, not even having the energy left to fall.
It’s almost incredible that the roofers can work in this heat. This is their season, however, and the work needs to be closed up before rain comes in September. If it is 40°C or 104°F on the terrace under the gazebo, what must the temperature be up there on 300 square meters of tiled roof? The reflection alone could kill me, but they continue with the bang, bang, bang of destroying an old roof that hasn’t been touched since 1957. The crane lifts silly-looking wheelbarrows of debris down to earth. I should go up there and see why they use wheelbarrows and where they can wheel them. That’s possible, because they leave at 5 in the evening and there are stairs that go up and up to the top, with landings here and there. From 7 in the morning until 5 in the evening they work, with only a lunch break at noon in Olga’s cooler cellar among the jars of tomatoes and barrels of wine and vinegar. They’re lucky to have it. I’m surprised that they don’t go splash in the river, as Olga’s grandchildren do. The water isn’t very cool, but it’s wet.
There’s one very young roofer who wears a jaunty Panama hat. I see him duck into a garage for the shade once in a while between cartloads of debris that he sorts endlessly. The rest are worn and wrinkled and burned as any tropical native. I believe they have become lizards who can only move in heat and sun, and that the transformation hasn’t yet happened for the young one.
Anything that goes to seed has done it. That includes most human beings. One acclimates and functions, but staying upright is about the extent of function. Reading or talking or remembering has fled for the duration. My brain needs cleats.
Tonight I will stay on the terrace under the gazebo and do nothing but listen to the cuckoo and French radio. I won’t cook or run out to buy something cold to eat. I won’t read. I will have a single candle burning far away from me and watch the stars appear and the upturned sliver moon. There will be fireflies. There will be cats but no laps.
I love summer.
As usual, clicking on a photo will make it full sized.
5 comments July 20th, 2007
