Summer in the City...

The summer heat waves always make me feel more at one with my neighborhood. They seem to draw an unparallelled sense of camaraderie out of people--the heat seems to lend a universality to everything, a sense that "we're all in this together." And I dig it. This weekend was one such case in point. I spent it inhabiting bar patios and getting to know folks that were friends of friends, talking about real estate and vintage household items and crazy tales in Spanish. I sat out in a certain adorable (and now engaged) couple's backyard as a redemptive breeze swirled the early-day's heat away, watching Dazed and Confused on their garage as the midnight hour rolled in. I bumped into a new acquaintance while trying to extract myself from a crowded corner-store, and sweatily engaged in an awkward dance and conversation with him as I tried to get out. I chatted up a knuckly old man who told me how his daughter had just graduated with a degree as an electrician. I mooned over the perfect moments of Lost in Translation with a close friend while gorging on Fritos. I conversed about the gloriousness that is bagels with a friendly old woman in the middle of the street. I humidly swirled around the neighborhood garage sale, getting chatted up by people I'm just starting to get to know, yoga instructors from previous blog entries, my mechanic, poets, immediate neighbors that I've seen enough times to bestow nicknames upon and finally have been officially introduced to. I spontaneously accepted a random coffee-shop invitation to the movies and spent a couple hours craning my neck in the front row of the movie theater, basking in the a/c while watching a heavy (but damn good) film about counterfeiters in a concentration camp and stifling a burst or two of inappropriate laughter at the old folks behind us who felt the need to narrate the more obvious events of the movie (i.e. "He just killed himself!"). I rode down streets I'd never taken before, chatting about poetry and smoking cigarettes while songs from converted LPs rolled their notes warmly around me. I overheatedly ate a breakfast and then sprawled out in the shade with visiting sibs that I don't see often enough. And I snuck awkwardly into secret basement-invitations to watch experimental bands vibrate my throat with their notes in converted living spaces. So although I am looking forward to the temperature topping out at only 79 tomorrow, I've gotta say: it was a damn good heat-wave.

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