July 9, 2012--Local Warming

When I looked up Friday afternoon and noticed Rona in the garden weeding in a long-sleeve sweater and realized it was more to keep her warm than to protect against thorns on the rosa regosa, I felt guilty.

Friends in New York, Washington, and Virginia were not only struggling still with loss of power but also with oppressive heat, which, there, was above 100 degrees while here, by Johns Bay, it was only a zephyrous 71.

I claim we spend half a year here not for weather reasons but for the everyday life, the honest work in the garden and kitchen, and because of many good friends; but in truth, at times like this--with temperatures in the 100s and storms of a new sort--derechos--ripping in straight lines at least 250 miles in length (a derecho), toppling trees and power lines, guilty or not, we are here also because of weather.

When the sun in its late afternoon hours drifts toward the western horizon--across the bay from us--light pours through our living and bedroom windows and because of solarization heats the house so much that we get a taste of what it is like in New York, Washington, and Virginia.

But just a taste because invariably at the same time zephyrs become breezes and breezes cooling winds. So my guilt about our good fortune (or good planning) is only for a moment expiated.

Though during those few sultry hours in various ways I take small advantage of the languor-inducing heat.

If I haven't already had my nap there is no more ideal time to snooze away an hour on the day bed. Or, it is an ideal time to read a real (not an e-) book, balanced on my chest on that same bed. At least half the time it takes no more than 10 minutes before reading becomes napping. Especially when reading, as I had been last week, something such as Richard Ford's recent novel, Canada, which can provoke sleep even during a cool evening but does so for certain when the air is liquid.

Canada is an ideal choice for reading-dozing because, if you have seen or read it, it opens, already famously, giving away the heart of the plot in the first two sentences--

First, I'll tell about the robbery our parents committed. Then about the murders, which happened later.

So, with this disclosed, the rest of it is for contemplating not for the force of its narrative power. Of which there is rather little.

Last week, stretched out in the heat, on page 202, I read--

It's odd, though, what makes you think about the truth. [Thinking about the truth made my eyes flutter.] It's so rarely involved in the events of your life. I quit thinking about the truth for a time. [The book began to slip toward my chest.] It's finer points seemed impossible to find among the facts. If there was a hidden design, living almost never shed light on it. [A shallow nap by then was in effect. When I snapped awake, I reread--] If there was a hidden design, living never shed light on it. [And continued.] Much easier to think about chess-- [Thinking about chess always induces nodding. So I nodded off again, but briefly. It was still hot in the room when I awoke.] The true character of the [chess] men always staying the way they were intended, a higher power moving everything around. [Contemplating higher powers always makes me heavy lidded.]  I wondered, for just a moment, if we--Berner [the narrator's twin sister] and I--were like that: small, fixed figures being ordered around by forces greater than ourselves. I decided we weren't. [With that decided, I let the book slip from my hands and got in a few solid winks. Some indeterminate time later, cooler, I resumed.] Whether we liked it or even knew it, we were accountable only to ourselves now, not to some greater design. [Existentialist thoughts such as these always evoke my interest, and so, refreshed, I finished the paragraph.] If our characters were truly fixed, they would have to be revealed later.

This manner of intermittently rereading idea-rich texts has its benefits. Slowed down, each sentence, especially those as lapidariosly crafted as Ford's, get full attention--even when one is drifting in and out of sleep--and whatever ideas can be found there are more easily uncovered.

Though I think he is wrong about chessmen--yes, they move in ways that stay "the way they were intended," but can't they be moved in an almost infinite number of patterns of attack and defense? There are, aren't there, at least as many combinations and permutations possible on a chessboard as there are in life itself?

But then again who is the mover? Not the pieces themselves of course. Perhaps this is closer to Ford's point--about what his characters discover and pass along to us.

I will do more rereading. And if tomorrow proves to be another hot one, I will ket you know if there is anything else to resolve this to be found between my winks and nods.