The electrified humidity is finally evaporating, the sun goes down at 8:36pm, and there’s a full moon tonight. Tonight I’m contemplating this apocalyptic quote from the photographer Robert Adams: “After people live awhile in a place to which they’ve laid waste, it gets easy to hate a great many things.”
I sneeze whenever I glance at the sun, which I’ve always taken as proof I am a night owl. It’s called a photic sneeze reflex, and it’s a fascinating little ailment. In 350 BCE, Aristotle considered this condition in his wonderfully titled Book of Problems and concluded the sun’s heat makes the nose sweat. In the 17th century, Francis Bacon noticed he did not sneeze if he faced the sun with his eyes closed, so it must have something to do with the eye rather than the nose. I like to think two thousand years passed before someone else pondered this issue.
Finished reading Michel Faber’s Under the Skin and rewatched the movie, which was an excellent example of the memory burning brighter than the thing itself. Now I’m grazing between three or four novels, waiting for my attention to settle. Meanwhile, I’m inching along with edits and revisions to my own story, and I’m determined to send this thing to somebody this year. And somewhere behind me, a boy nags his father, telling him he wants to learn to fight. “Son, I’m only going to teach you to block. You don’t ever need to punch.”
