Ah, the dog days of summer. There are certain perennial, evocative smells inseparable from this time of year. Cut grass and sunscreen, for example. Barbecue coals, melting tarmac, bug spray, and sweat. To these, I would sadly now add wildfire smoke.
Some days, leaving one’s air-conditioned climes and venturing outdoors, even if only so far as the car one has parked in one’s driveway, can feel something akin to climbing into a wood-fired pizza oven and closing the door. Yet, every day, that is exactly what I make it a point of principle to do. (Luckily, I don’t notice the difference so much, owning, as I do, a hundred-year-old house with no AC. I mostly rely on the ambient chill created by a century of ghosts to lower the temperature.)
Nor would I ever consider using the AC in my vintage automobile, even supposing it was still functioning. Unlike the other drivers I see, with their windows rolled up, air conditioning clearly cranked, chilling their personal capsules whilst heating up the communal mothership beyond, I drive with a bandana that has been dipped in ice water upon my head, and another draped across my shoulders.
Nor am I typically headed off to some swimming pool or optimally cooled mall, or even to find a shady spot to drink a Corona on a patio. You are more likely, rather, to find me in the reptile house or the tropical biosphere of the botanical gardens.
Perhaps you find this perplexing. It’s possible you think I’m a fool. Well, first, let me assure you that there are far more valid reasons to think me foolish than that, so the joke’s on you!
Possibly, if you take a more generous view, you might wonder if I’m taking the advice of the pop artist St. Vincent, and “paying my way” in pain. In other words, am I deriving some sort of kinky gratification from these acts of thermal counter-intuitivity? Something akin to lashing myself with a three-line whip whilst listening to Elon Musk doing a podcast with Jordan Peterson.
The answer is, no. Or that’s not the entirety of the reason I’m doing these things. Well, if I’m being honest, I’m not really doing these things. I’m only using them as a, what-you-call-it, a metaphor, providing these fake examples to make a very important point.
A good, thoughtful writer at this juncture would now further illustrate, then adeptly summarize, the cogent points they have been symbolically making. But, I would suggest, an even better scribe and philosopher would leave it entirely up to the reader to reach their own conclusion as to the insights offered. In this way, the article becomes something not unlike a psychologist’s ink-blot, upon which the reader is invited to place their own interpretation.
When you have reached this conclusion, I would be delighted if you would take the time to let me know. You could certainly post your thoughts in the comments section of The Voice. Or, if you are near Winnipeg, you can probably find me on the patio of Leopold’s Pub, with a sweating bucket of Corona in front of me, lazing like a dog in these seemingly endless, but ultimately fleeting, days of summer.
