July 30, 1999

"Is it hot enough for you? Is it...? Hot....Is it hot enough...?" I'm thinking of that moment in The Great Gatsby when Nick is riding the train into New York City and the day is sweltering. There is no air-conditioning (outside the movie palaces); not even Gatsby or the vastly wealthy Buchanans have it. So Nick is listening to the talk - the things people always say in the heat about the heat. He's finding all the talk worse than the heat itself. Because there's really nothing to say about the weather. Ever. Unless you're the rarest poet cutting to the heart of "the thingness of the mere thing". It's just damn hot.

No jogging tonight.

I drove out this morning looking for the Driver's License Bureau. I thought I'd gotten good directions, but I must have forgotten them. Never found the place. I enjoyed riding with the windows down, sweating like a sea monster, blasting the radio....I could do this because all these other folks have their windows up. XRT was pushing Tom Petty and Buddy Guy, whose "Strange Brew" is all-time perfect hothumidweathermusic. It tells you to sweat, just sweat, and paints the air all garish green and brown. Creates a context in which it's okay to revel in the heat which, like death, will not be denied.

Something about the blues and summer. Memories of the Houston Blues Festival years ago. I remember old guys like Lightning Hopkins (all alone on the stage) and Big Mama Thornton (backed by Stevie Ray Vaughn and Double Trouble). Old Clifton Chenier came out and got everybody dancing like fools in the killing sun.

All this talk gives me a yearning right now...so I toss on John Lee Hooker and off he goes with "Boogie Chillun", which ends with this great lyric: "One night I was laying down. I heard mama and papa talking. I heard papa tell mama to let that boy boogie-woogie 'cause it's in him and its got to come out." Some folks seem to be the last to know what's inside their own kids. Sometimes (out of fear?) they're so intent on a certain straight and narrow path that they just don't get it about their own kid. But papa knew.

"I remember my youth and the feeling that will never come back any more - the feeling that I could last for ever, outlast the sea, the earth, and all men; the deceitful feeling that lures us on to joys, to perils, to love, to vain effort - to death; the triumphant conviction of strength, the heat of life in the handful of dust, the glow in the heart that with every year grows dim, grows cold, grows small, and expires - and expires, too soon, too soon - before life itself." Joseph Conrad