Over 90 degree days…is it the dog days already?

It’s over 90 degrees today here in Seattle, announcing that yes, July (and summertime) are here! We made watermelon popsicles yesterday in preparation, as eating (cooking) anything seems impossible and unlikely.

I’m trying to be responsible and positive and productive today. Yesterday I was a mess – just the bad news, lack of sleep, stress, rejections – I listened to Smashing Pumpkins’ “Bullet with Butterfly Wings” about ten times in a row, which the cats found curious, anyway; I woke up at four in the morning full of despair. Last night, the bunnies wouldn’t even come out, it was so hot, and all I saw was my osprey wheeling in the bright blue sky. The animals stayed wisely undercover and in the shade. It is truly the “dog days” of summer, even though it’s still early (we don’t usually get true summer weather here til after July 4.)

So what to do besides shut off the computer, shut off the television set, and try to do some good in the world? We’re visiting a sick friend, trying to get together some materials from my writing past for a library project (rejections from 2002? Early versions of Becoming the Villainess with six different titles and notes scribbled all over by unnamed friends? Back journals where my first poems were published?) both of which made me reflect on how our perspectives impact our moods. Sometimes not allowing the bad news (whatever it is) to become immediate – to take the long view, the bigger perspective, to try not to let heat, or idiots, make us lose hope. Bad news looms so large – the impersonal note in the e-mail, the tiny slip of paper, the casual no’s, the world’s simmering spin towards destruction, and every single television show obsessed with the end of the world – that it seems impossible to crowd it out with beauty, or peace, or love, at all. So what do you do? Unplug, observe the beauty around you, connect with people you love and trust, maybe work on that one project that makes you happy.

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