hot enough for me

The weather has turned unseasonably hot. Really hot. After a strange spring of tornadoes and cool temps, this is unexpected. It usually does not get this hot until August. My tolerance for the heat diminishes as I age. And grow heavier. I used to like it. Even lived in Atlanta in a house with no air conditioning for several years. That would be unthinkable now. Of course, I probably have thirty years, at the outside, before I get to the age where I'm always cold and have to wear a sweater in the summertime. So I should enjoy my sweat-soaked drawers while I can.

still in Kansas

Yesterday we had tornadoes in the area again. Emergency sirens were going off and the television was telling everyone to take cover immediately. The weatherman said the possible tornado was headed, if not straight for me, at least too close for comfort. Took the dog out and she wanted nothing more than to get back inside. It was eerie. The wind was blowing the trees around and the sky was many shades of dark and trying to come to a boil. We headed back in and Chloe got under the table and I started getting a mattress ready just in case. Once I felt as prepared as I could I went back out to take some pictures of any tornadoes that might be on the horizon. I've been dreaming of them for years after all, and deja vu was in the air. Thankfully, it had calmed considerably. I waited a few minutes until it was evident that we were in the clear. We didn't even get any of the hail or lightning that brought the interstates to a stop just a few miles away. By eight it was all gone and after all the previous tornado damage this year the city just shrugs off a near miss and goes back to business.

dreamtime weather

It's back and it is disorienting.

Friday was a beautiful summer day that got into the mid 80s. Saturday was a cooler spring day after overnight rain. Sunday was windy fall football weather. Today was a winter day, all of 42 when I got to work late this morning, with intermittent rain. Freeze warnings are in effect tonight.

Peculiar. I find it a little harder to get my bearings than usual. My weather complex is not as bad as it used to be. Mostly because time goes so fast now that I know the weather will change before long. But this is always the toughest time of the year. By the middle of April everyone is ready for some nice weather. A day like today after a day like Friday makes me feel like a mule no closer to that carrot.

It is much like dreaming. Can't quite seem to get there. One day bears little resemblance to the next. No continuity.

It'll pass.

In the meantime, I'm headed to Philly where the forecast is for sunny and pleasant spring days the whole time I'm there. Gonna head north and get warm. Going for the interment of my Grandmother's ashes. I'm sure I'll be doing some drinking in Manayunk.

The sun is threatening

to make an appearance in Atlanta today. That would make the second nice day of spring so far this year. Still kind of windy, but it sure would be nice to get a break from the cool, gloomy Autumn football weather we've been enjoying here for the last few weeks.

Chloe and I startled a cardinal this morning. He took off in a flash of brilliant red. A brief, surprising burst of color that I appreciated. I think it's a good omen.

1/23/08: Snowy Chloe

We had some snow in these parts recently. The clueless weather guessers predicted "heavy" snowfall. We got about three quarters of an inch. But it was pretty while it lasted, and we got to take Chloe out for some fun in the snow, which you can see here. That squeaky sound is me laughing as she runs around in her crazy-batshit-possessed by the ya-yas way that she does sometimes.

8/9/07: hot enough for me

103 today. Forecast tomorrow: 103. But relief is in sight as Saturday will only be 98! I chose a good year to get fat my friends. Off to bed to recline in a puddle of my own sweat. Nonetheless, tomorrow promises fun.

nefarious theories

Ok, I think I've got it straight. Hurricane Katrina, indeed the entire recent onslaught of hurricanes, was caused by the Yakuza using technology originally invented by Tesla. Sounds a bit peculiar, granted, but hey...there's proof. Heheh.

IDAHO FALLS, Idaho – A Pocatello weatherman who gained attention for an unusual theory that Hurricane Katrina was caused by the Japanese mafia using a Russian electromagnetic generator has quit the television station.

You can read the whole article here. And better yet, you can see this weatherman's website here.

Of course there are alternative theories. It might not be the Japanese mafia, it might be...you'll never guess...the government of the United States of America:

One U.S. project that is looked on with deep suspicion by the weather control crowd is the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) in Gakona, Alaska. The government-run web site for this project states that its goal is "to further advance our knowledge of the physical and electrical properties of the Earth's ionosphere."

To those who are wary of government activities and familiar with the legends around Tesla's weather control research, this remote site with its huge array of radio antenna bouncing electrical waves around in the ionosphere seems awfully darn suspicious, and dangerous.

You can read the whole thing in the Macon Telegraph, which apparently is tuned in to some of the stranger frequencies coming from the world of conspiracy theories. You should also check out the HAARP website, but mysteriously, when I tried to open it, it wouldn't. So I can't provide a link right now. Clearly nefarious forces are at work. Or just google HAARP for all sorts of...fun?

I probably should not poke fun given my own lowgrade weather schizophrenia,* but this shit always gets me. The truth is there ARE nefarious forces at work in the world. We all know that. And I have no doubt that the military is sinking lots and lots of money into weather research and would in fact desperately love to be able to control the weather. But ominous forces who secretly control the world are not the root fear that informs conspiratorial thinking. Nope. In fact, they are a preferable alternative to a more potent set of fears. Namely that we are living in a world in which we have no real control and are subject to destructive natural forces that are completely indifferent to our suffering, our fear, and our hope and that therefore imply that there is nothing at all behind any of this. No God, no Karma, no meaning. Nothing. And that, for many of us, is the ultimate horror. So the conspiracy theory serves as a patchwork solution to an urgent metaphysical and existential dilemma by providing a narrative, the hope of resolution and the promise of some larger purpose that might redeem our suffering.

Or maybe that's just what THEY want me to think.

* Given my propensity to obsess over, and complain about, the weather I feel I should acknowledge that September was a beautiful month here. Warm and dry and not too hot. I shall remember it fondly come February and March.

dream come true?

The year of peculiar weather continues. The entire Atlanta area is under a tornado watch and flash flood warnings have been issued. This means that all over the metro area the root systems of trees will be loosened and those trees will fall over onto houses, cars, and, occasionally, people. This has already been going on for a few weeks now. It is common in the summer time here when it rains very hard, very fast, sometimes for days on end. Normally it is too hot in July for there to be a real tornado threat, but the summer has been quite mild. I can remember long brutal summers here...day after day of triple digit temperatures and humidity to match. But it's been a while since we've had one of those.

So maybe on my way home from work tonight I'll be swept up in a tornado. After years of strange, forboding, occasionally apocalyptic tornado dreams, it seems only fitting.

everything just ran together

The sky is an impenetrable grey sheet. No more rain yet. No sun either. Just grey. This year of strange weather has continued into the summer. We've had one, maybe two, warm days so far. It has been much hotter in such chilly places as Minneapolis and Chicago than it has been in Atlanta. The summers here used to be rough, but this year I've only really needed the air conditioning to get rid of the humidity on occasion. It's been pleasant but I suppose there's still plenty of time for things to heat up.

Seventeen days without a drink. One week without a smoke. I thought that if I took away my primary crutches I could expect to find myself anxious, stressed and irritable. But the opposite has largely been the case. Most of that strange pressure that radiates out from my sternum--I think of it as a family marker, kind of a somatic coat of arms or something--has dissipated, leaving me feeling more lucid than I have in some time.

I didn't start smoking until after I was thirty ( I trace it back to the daily sheesha pipe in Egypt) and I've quit before for long months at a time. But when something stressful would come up I would find myself wanting a smoke. So when the teaching workload started piling up last semester and I had to deal with the plagiarists, I took refuge in menthols, telling myself that I would quit when the semester ended. I missed the deadline by six or seven weeks.

I often said that I like smoking because cigarettes punctuate time, providing me with a brief window of relative stillness bounded by the ritualistic movements of smoking. Dividing time seemed important and helpful somehow; I have a difficult relationship with time. Quitting smoking, I told people, was like reading a book with no punctuation marks--everything just ran together. But whatever solace I might find in a cigarette was fleeting, obviously, and no sooner would I finish one before I was wondering when I might have another. I decided that smoking was more about consumption than time. And now that I am abstaining it feels to me that cigarettes did not so much divide time as interrupt it regularly. And while I think that's true, I would not go so far as to deny that sometimes a cigarette is exceedingly pleasant.

To those of you I owe calls or emails, I apologize for my tardiness. Communication shall be forthcoming. I should also add that nice guys are occasionally rewarded…the rarity makes it that much sweeter. Here comes the sun, right on cue. How cinematic.

Hot enough for ya?

This has been an unusual weather year in Atlanta, and it reached new heights of absurdity today. It is the first day of June and the temperature just barely broke sixty degrees. As I type this it is fifty-nine degrees. It is also raining as it has been for five days now. Friday was a beautiful spring day, then Saturday came, the sun disappeared, and it’s felt like late fall in Georgia ever since. I obsess about the weather, obviously, and no I’m not on medication, and I am about one more day of this from losing my mind. I need heat. I need sunshine. I need to fake my death and head for New Orleans.

The weather is always a little fishy here, except in summer when you know pretty well what you’re gonna get. People in Atlanta often say that we don’t really get spring here, we just go straight from winter to summer. And many years that seems true. But usually by this time of year summer has arrived to stay for several months and I am happy. But not this year. We’ve had a warm day or two here or there, but the nice weather was just passing through on its way somewhere else. I went digging through the historical archives of the National Weather Service and confirmed my suspicion: this day really is an anomaly. I looked back at the weather in Atlanta on June 1 over the last fifty years (shut up smartass) and the two lowest high temps I could find were 73 in 1992 and 66 in 1967. I wonder how far back I’d have to look to find something lower than today? It feels…wrong, and it seems like there is a malaise hanging over Atlanta. I need a tin foil coat to go with my hat.

like your hair is on fire

It's a beautiful December day here in Georgia. The weather will be the death of me yet...I'm telling you. It's the last weekend in fucking April in the deep south--I should be sweating and enjoying a smoke with br'er rabbit, but no, I am bundled up here at work trying to avoid grading and preparing a lecture for tomorrow. Here are the fruits of my procrastination:

Kris Kristofferson on Johnny Cash (thanks Mike):

Johnny Cash was a biblical character. He was like some old preacher, one of those dangerous old wild ones. He was like a hero you'd see in a western. He was a giant. And unlike anyone else I've known, he never lost that stature. I don't think we'll see anyone like him again.

Tom Waits on Marc Ribot (and lots of other good stuff on music and the creative process):

Q: You mentioned developing your own language. Do you mean something along the lines of: "Play like your hair is on fire?"

Waits: I think I said that to (guitarist Mark) Ribot. But you don't have to tell Ribot to play like his hair is on fire because his hair is always on fire. All that means is: "play" (your instrument). Someone like Ribot doesn't draw distinctions between playing a wedding, at a trailer park or playing for the pope.
I guess most of the people I play with are adventurers in one way or another. With Ribot you have to be a little careful, because if you say you want a little feedback, you might get an automobile accident. It's always interesting finding somebody who, you know, they know just as much about pygmy music as they do Big Boy Cruddup or Memphis Slim or Gavin Bryars.
Some people have a rich (frame of musical reference). Like, Ribot was in a soul band in New York called the Real Tones for many years, and they backed up Solomon Burke, Wilson Pickett and people like that.

Shitsville

Happy St. Patrick's day. Old St. Pat converted the Irish to Christianity and it's been a long history of glorious triumph for the Emerald Isle ever since. My grandfather's name was McManus--I can poke fun.

To the point: It is getting to be the end of March, but in perusing weather.com, I cannot help but notice that Atlanta is one of the coldest spots on the East coast. Colder than Philadelphia, NYC, Boston, even colder than Bangor Maine. It is cold.

This is stupid.

I must say it's stupid because otherwise it seems more insidious...nefarious even.

I've made it the entire winter without complaining about the weather, but New Orleans ruined it. It was so beautiful there and it was so crappy upon returning here that all my old weather resentments were stirred to life. The truth is it was a rather mild winter here. But it's been shitty lately. Now I know those of you in cold places are laughing at me, but you know what, you don't have to live there. If you live in Boston or Bangor, or some other miserable town, well, the weather is your punishment for living in such a place. This is the south. The weather is supposed to be one of our rewards for living here. And I know spring will probably be beautiful, and I don't even mind the boiling summers we endure, but right now it's shitsville pal. Shitsville.

p.s. If I ever begin to seem truly schizophrenic...please tell me.

a plague of Robins

This afternoon there were dozens of Robins in the parking lot scurrying around in some sort of agitated state. It seemed to fit the forbidding weather. The winter dreamtime weather is still in full effect here: Wednesday was a beautiful day--68 and sunny, a mere 48 hours later it was 35 and freezing rain was beginning to fall from the sky, making a brittle little sound when it fell.
And speaking of dreamtime, I am left with three peculiar dream snippets from this past week:

In a dream I became convinced that I needed to open a store, really more of a trendy boutique, called "1 and 2." My merchandise would all be related to the bathroom and its corresponding bodily functions. I would open it in Manhattan of course where such a thing might actually go over. Then I got paranoid about letting anyone know of my plan, lest they steal the idea and beat me to it. Don't steal my idea.

In a second dream I am in a northeastern city, not sure if it was NYC or Philly, and I can see into Jersey. Tornadoes are on the horizon, coming my way. This has been a recurring motif in my dreams for years. I get the usual worry: shit, what do I do? Then I am somewhere akin to a carnival or a fair in a field and the tornadoes are fast approaching. Before I know it they are bearing down on me, but strangely I realize that the tornado closest to me is emanating from a man casually walking across the field in my direction. He gets up quite close to me and I can see this tornado pouring from his head and shoulders, spiraling off into the sky. It is pretty fucking amazing. I am pondering...am I being tricked? Is this some sort of elaborate visual illusion or am I seeing something unimaginable?

Lastly, I am off on a trip to Denmark. Or I will be shortly. This is probably the single most common setting for my dreams--getting ready to depart for a trip (as I've mentioned before in this blog). In fact it was the second dream of the night with the same scenario. In the first I was with my ex-wife who in the dream was still my wife and we were visiting her mother who was showing us how they had dyed their little dog blue when I realized that our plane would depart in an hour and we would probably not make it. But in the second dream I will be travelling with br'er Bunni and a good time will be had. I am packing and in a bit of a hurry. I realize I have several shirts I was not aware of owning. But all my usual shirts seem to be in the laundry along with...all my pants. How will I go to Denmark with no pants? Damn. Then the dream went in a very different direction involving a woman I know named Jezebel (really her name) and I can't repeat the rest, but I never did get to Denmark.

winter in Georgia

Winter in Atlanta can be peculiar. I know... the weather is strange all over and the winter doesn't even last all that long here but it's still weird. In most places the winter is cold and once in a rare while there may be an unexpected reprieve in the form of a not so cold day. But winter in Atlanta is three seasons in one and the seasons can change in the course of a day. We had spring weather here on Friday--almost seventy degrees. Beautiful. Today, as I write this in the middle of the afternoon on Sunday, it is twenty-six degrees. Now I know that plenty of people today have snow to go with their frigid temperatures and I suppose I should be grateful that we don't have to deal with that, though I myself rather miss the snow. Winters in Atlanta are often cold, and often wet, but the cold and the wet never seem to coincide so as to produce snow. But we do have a daytime temp that's about forty-five degrees colder than it was the day before last. This curious phenomenon has a dreamlike affect; it feels as though the rules of nature, the regular rhythms of causation and time and space, have been suspended and one can slide effortlessly from one environment, one climate, one reality, into another without realizing it. Yesterday was just such a day. It started mild and damp, the sky was gray and there was some fog. Felt like an early spring day with precipitation imminent. The wet never made it to the party however and by late afternoon the sun was trying to dissipate the mist and the haze and the temperature was starting to drop. By dinnertime it was fall in Atlanta. After an evening's entertainment I returned to my car at about 2 a.m. and it was the dead of winter and the wind was blowing violently, shaking branches loose from trees and scattering trash around the streets. Time for bed and the comfort of less real dreams.