Sheltering with your ghosts in some leviathan's bones

[sovay]

It was so very too hot to sleep that at half past midnight spatch and I took a walk just to get out of our building where with air conditioner and two fans at full blast the temperature is hovering on the wrong side of 80 °F. We were out for about forty-five minutes, enough time to walk up Highland and down McGrath and then to lose ourselves in a transient maze of one-way streets and bathtub Marys and tawny lilies and red roses growing in strangers' front yards. It was cooler outside, although loweringly humid. Inevitably glimpsed over the skyline, the casino continues its one-corporation campaign of light pollution the exact same smudge-thumbed orange as sodium streetlight, reflecting off the low soot-banked clouds like an incipient hellmouth. As we turned past the corner of Jackson and Bradley, we heard steady, distinct human snoring—it was a tenant sleeping out on the second-floor porch in a time-honored attempt to deal with the suffocating heat. It is supposed to storm tomorrow and we're hoping it makes a difference. I'm hoping it makes enough of a difference for me to sleep. I feel stupid beyond expression. I would prefer to be writing, or at the very least unconscious. It's been days.

I understand it is considered rude to steal from museums, but I desperately covet this cowrie-shell compass charm.

Comments

[thisbluespirit]

I'm hoping it makes enough of a difference for me to sleep.

I hope so too. <3

[sovay]

I hope so too.

I slept into the afternoon, but I did manage to sleep! I had to get up in the middle of the morning and stop the fan from making a weird noise that sounded so much like my alarm vibrating that it woke me.

[cmcmck]

I can see why- that is a thing of beauty!

[sovay]

I can see why- that is a thing of beauty!

I don't even know where I'd find something like it unless I made it myself. I have a small collection of historical objects I covet desperately, and right now it's hovering neck and neck with the duck-backed stamp seal at the MFA. (It leaves the imprint of a suḫurmāšu, a goat-fish, sign of the god Ea. I've loved it since I could walk.)

[asakiyume]

I love the magic of hot summer night walks. Ordinary rules don't seem to apply, or distances. You're in people's living rooms because they have windows wide to get some air in, and they're sleeping on their porches, so essentially their bedrooms are right beside you too. And your conversation--wisps of it--rises up to them too. And time seems weird. Were you out a minute or a whole season?
... But for your comfort and sanity's sake, I hope the promised thunderstorms bring some coolth.

[sovay]

Ordinary rules don't seem to apply, or distances. You're in people's living rooms because they have windows wide to get some air in, and they're sleeping on their porches, so essentially their bedrooms are right beside you too. And your conversation--wisps of it--rises up to them too. And time seems weird. Were you out a minute or a whole season?

Time does get weird. We were surprised we'd been out for forty-five minutes by the time we found our own street again.

... But for your comfort and sanity's sake, I hope the promised thunderstorms bring some coolth.

Thank you. At the moment the afternoon appears to be very bright and very hot, with big sea-stacked clouds. Fingers crossed.

[asakiyume]

We have had thunderstorms, so maybe they're moving your way now...

[sovay]

We have had thunderstorms, so maybe they're moving your way now...

We got a doozy!

[negothick]

Hot town, summer in the city. Thanks for bringing back early childhood memories of visits to my grandmother in the Bronx, my other grandmother on the Upper West Side, in the days before widespread air-conditioning.

[sovay]

Thanks for bringing back early childhood memories of visits to my grandmother in the Bronx, my other grandmother on the Upper West Side, in the days before widespread air-conditioning.

You're welcome?

[negothick]

Good memories, though sometimes causing nightmares of the open window on the fire escape, fears of someone--or something--coming in.

[sovay]

Good memories, though sometimes causing nightmares of the open window on the fire escape, fears of someone--or something--coming in.

Just checking.

[nineweaving]

That amulet belongs a story by you. I know it's not the same as having it, but you could give it to others.

Nine

[sovay]

That amulet belongs a story by you. I know it's not the same as having it, but you could give it to others.

I will see if it finds its way into one. In the meantime, selkie has a legitimate claim to it.