At the Washington Street Station on the Blue Line today, there was a guy playing Pachelbel’s Canon on the harmonica. I waited for an O’Hare bound train. It was right when rush hour bleeds into the time of day when no one takes the O’Hare bound trains, so we had to wait a long time. Everyone used their phones. I started to sweat. The harmonica notes bounced back and forth in the tunnel air.
The heat, as you might have guessed, had broken by this point. All around the city it felt as though someone had finally realized how uncomfortable the heat had grown. That maybe it was time to try something else.
The heat drives people crazy. Is this a secret? Of course note. WE all know what a nightmare it can be to walk out of your house and have the air envelop you like a wet sock.
Look at this. Writing about the weather and the guy with the harmonica. What do you think of this? Do you despair on my behalf? Do you wonder what emptiness could prompt the evaluation of such banalities?
Save these emotions and any impulse to run to the tissue box, Margaret. This is an exercise, okay? You, along with the motivations for writing in the first place, are a figment of the writer’s (in this case, moi) imagination. I write for you, I write for no one. I write nonsense about the weather and about the air, and it can just very easily vanish.
(But on a rather more accurate and meaningful note, I am in bed. I am in my underwear with the fan turning above me. I have my eyes closed to keep out the light. To close my own personal curtains around the world and think about the motions of my fingers across the keyboard. Every once in awhile I look up to ascertain the accuracy of my stabs at the keys. My creations of meaning. My efforts toward the exorcism of whatever monsters have kept me from writing in the past weeks, months, whatever. Are they gone?)
