Daisy’s gone all Blanche DuBois in this heat

She still looks like Don Knotts but is acting like an aging Southern belle, reclining on the couch most of the time, somewhat crumpled, wondering where’s the motherfucking julips

There’s a choir of cacadas abuzz and they torque it up when the sun comes out and when you open the door and go outside it’s like walking into neighbourhood soup.

It’s hot in the way the CNE was hot when we were kids. So hot you had to drink your ice cream in one gulp and the surface of your cotton candy bloomed into little red sugar-dots right before your eyes. I remember how nice it felt to whirl around on the smooth swingy rides, and the brief stints with terror on the roller coasters which were scary even in the distance like some old carpenter had thrown them together overnight, a few boards askew, a couple of nails short.

I remember the whiz-bang, screaming our heads off, our bodies flung into fragile space and then pressed so hard against each other that we thought we would die from either laughing all our air out or having it squished out. 

My mom’s sunglasses flew off her head on that ride and they still hurtle in my memory. I don’t think she knew what she was in for but she went on with my brother while my sister and I, too short, watched, half in horror at our rag-doll mother and half with glee.

Later I’d go with my best friend Marie, a terrifically good sport who disliked rides but braved up for my sake and went on the worst of them. The giggles started blooming in the long line up and I don’t think I’ve laughed harder in my life. At dusk we whirled around on the Ferris wheel, our wrists boasting fat rainbows of friendship bracelets, the moon so close I felt as if I had to scootch over in the swinging chair to make room for it.

We would band with other kids, too, and become alarmingly intimate with them, our bodies tangled and sweating, hopping from ride to ride. We’d share candy apples and ice cream, grab their sticky hands and go howling into the dusk, and then we’d never see them again.

Also in August was camp which I loved then and love the memory of now. I still feel the anticipation on the last day of July because August first was the day the bus came and picked us up in the Woolco parking lot and off we went for two weeks of what heaven’s maybe like where you frolic and play and accomplish and experience all kinds of firsts, make instant friendships of extremely high caliber perhaps due to their imposed brevity. I went with Nancy Masson, my oldest best friend who lived across the street, and even now when we talk we remember camp. Sometimes we giggle our way through curry lunches in square restaurants beside huge malls near highways and under jets we steep in the hot summers when we were young and brave and learned to paddle our own canoes.

These are the dog days. The lawns are browning, Elizabeth, and leaves are of the grass, Walt

Also I have a crush on a tree

I awake-dreamed about this tree last night and so today again I walked along the boardwalk until the end and then along some hot sandy paths until there it was beaming right back at me and I went up and held my palm against it just like I had imagined and it felt wonderful. I think there’s a great deal more to everything than we know.

Yes, these dog days of summer are so easy to squint and glide through in wafts and then everything stops when we try to fathom the plight of all the poor people who can’t leave an entire country while we worry about being unable to leave our cool houses.

I don’t know what to do about it but there’s no futility in hoping for the best, is there, and so that’s what I’m doing, fiercely.