August Angst

I've been at Saturn for 45 minutes and the cars waiting for service have not budged one bit. That is how August is, sitting still, the air growing more and more dense. the grass longer and more full of ants, spiders growing fat with babies. I hate August. And apparently even the days leading up to August as it is only July 21.


The sun is too bright, too intense, stabbing rays of metal and the heat so relentless that I feel pummeled by it, flattened, dispirited. The kind of heat that as you get into your car, put your hands on the steering wheel, they jump off like moths in a bug zapper, fingertips dancing on the wheel to try to control the trajectory of the vehicle. Unbearable and so unfair, all this heat and pain, inflicted.

The fetid air threatens to suffocate, as smelly and narrow as if a plastic bag were over your head, forcing your own stale breath down your throat.

August is the month when nothing happens. All of life becomes too clotted, like milk souring and hard lumps of putrid soured cream clog the opening. The inescapable reality that nothing is every truly accomplished or done. The bed is forever rumpled. You must shower every day, sometimes twice, to be "fresh." The grass keeps growing and growing. Dirt and dust and filth threaten at every step to overtake everything. Even as you sleep, the filthy forces are at work; countless sleepies gather in the corners of your eyes and your tongue and mouth grow matted with morning sludge. Nothing is safe or fresh or beginning and everything keeps threatening to overcome, to overgrow, to entrap, to mummify.

I hate August. The land of no relief and no release.