Heat Advisory in Effect
I’m not dead. And I’m not done with this weblog, either, damn it; I’m just waking up from a really hot, wet Atlanta summer that’s splitting at the seams and maybe, just finally, releasing me from its clutches.

What is it about the climate here, that it grabs you and fashions you into some sort of extra in its grand and violent summer drama? In other cities, people walk around well-dressed and impassive. They look right past one another on the streets as they click by in expensive shoes and silk shirts with armpits unbesmirched by sweat. Not so, here.

Here, there is no neat "urban environment" untouched by the searing sun and scalding wet air, by outright bursts of torrential rain and lightening that knocks over trees and power-lines and floods the sewerless streets -- once each day, around four p.m. Kudzu thrives in this. It sends out poison-green tendrils that multiply and thicken into strong, hard vines under highway ramps. Blankets the sides of buildings, thrusting shoots into cracks in the cement; it is stronger, you see, than all of this.

The heat, it makes us angry. It makes us sweat and cry and drink a little more than we would at night when the cicadas are louder than our own thoughts. It makes us lash out and think we’re in love and then change our minds. And change them again. It makes for fast driving. When the air’s so thick with humidity, don’t forget you’re breathing it, too. Don’t think you’re in control.