Today when I got in
Today when I got in the car in the afternoon heat of Dallas I noticed a blister that had developed on the palm of my hand from the blazing hot steering wheel. It reminded me just how great the heat can be.
When I think of nature I personify it with two images. One is an ice cold humanoid figure that comes together in harsh trapezoidal angles. The other image is of a human flame all curvy and dripping. Nothing in nature grabs my attention more completely than an extreme temperature. Between the two extremes I hold heat in much more reverance. Perhaps that is a product of growing up in the South. As a child I spent a lot of time pondering all the ways that heat made the South what it is. I thought about why the South’s peculiar institution persisted as long as it did and I pictured hot, tired plantation owners not wanting to face the heat. I thought about Alabama’s red clay and how that persists as a reminder of Alabama’s slavery heritage. I thought of the slower way things move in the South and I pictured Southerners melting slowly under the hot sun like a Dali clock. In every book or short story I ever read that takes place in the South the heat lurks somewhere in town driving the story. Could Wiseblood, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter or To Kill a Mockingbird’s famous court scene have taken place on a pleasant 75 degree day in the North? As a child it always struck me as arbitrary that one place should be hot, and that it would have so strong an effect on the character of the people that live there.
In the modern world we’ve become so clever that we can pretty much manufacture our own climate. It doesn’t have to be hot if you don’t want it to be. We plod through our Laodicean lives with all the zest and passion of a McDonald’s hamburger. Oh sure, we can blame TV for dumbing everything down, or videogames or whatever scapegoat we have for the month. I have to wonder if it all comes down to air conditioning. We have our nice comfy micro-climate and with it the ease of just relaxing and watching life amble on by.