I have no trouble remembering the hottest nights, nights so abroil my skin felt liquid and the world seemed to be on the verge of melting.
One especially steamy night, a long, wrenching shriek filled the air, followed by a silence, followed by a catastrophic crash. Lights in nearby Nor is extreme heat good for you, especially if you are young or older or poor or non-white, and therefore less likely to have access to a public swimming pool or air conditioning or adequate housing or any other refuge from the heat. Heat kills more people every year in the United States than any other weather event, more than hurricanes, floods and tornadoes combined. In B.C.’s 2021 heat wave – the one that baked the phrasetaxes the brain’s, the flames shed darkness instead of light.
A fan, on the other hand, plays over you unevenly, friendly but also occasionally overfamiliar. Trying to sleep with a fan painting your body with dryness is like necking with an inept partner: The fan’s breeze wants to be your friend but can’t decide what to concentrate on or how close to get. When it gets really hot I give up and go to the local public pool. During heat waves it stays open until 11 p.m. I slipped in for a bedtime dip the other evening. Next to me in the pool, a trio of women in their 30s sat up to their necks, unmoving in the shallow water, chatting about the world and their lives and their partners and their careers. One of them was a social worker in the poor northwest corner of the city.