.
More than a week has gone by, and we are still frying like
hotcakes on the griddle. The air is thick with summer smoke,
burning sun glares red through the haze, like the dog days
on the east coast.

I guess this is my excuse for not blogging that much - too
hot, too strange. Inside the house we are locked up tight,
doors shut, windows shut, and the fans are blowing on you
all the time. Ceiling fans, attic fans, rotating buzzing fans,
floor fans, swamp coolers and refrigerated air, continuously
rotating in search of cool breezes.

Outside the heat hits you like a hammer. Immediately parching
your skin, your throat, blowing cotton and twigs and tearing
leaves off the trees, it is really lovely. Delightful, for about 2 minutes.

I was watching one of my favorite movies the other night - The Man
Who Would Be King. The part I saw was when the two Englishmen
(Sean Connery and Michael Caine) are holed up under an overhang
on the edge of an abyss, pondering the end of their lives in such
a place. There is no way they can cross the enormous crevasse in
the snow, and they consider the length of their days, what they
accomplished.

They decide that, no, they did not do good deeds; they did not help
to save the world; really they weren't worth much as that goes, but...
they remember the things they saw that no man had seen, the
crazy times they had...and they accept the value of their lives in that,
and they start laughing, whooping and hollering, side-splitting laughter
rings out over the high peaks...

Which causes an avalanche to tumble snow from the mountains above
them, and the snow piles and piles, and it fills the crevasse...so that
when the sky clears, they step out into the bright day and walk across
the beautiful snow to safety...

This makes me think that while we sit here, wondering how we will cross
this crevasse, we must come to accept our crazy, beautiful lives, and
laugh from the depths, belly-laughs that will loosen the moorings of our
bondage.