It was hot. The kind of heat that hurt. The kind of heat that caused children to stay inside and adults to appreciate being stuck in an air-conditioned office. The kind of heat that laughed at rain clouds and dared them to get involved, to even attempt assuaging the agony it meant to inflict.
The kind of heat that made people forget courtesy and compassion and even self-regard. The kind of heat that animals—creatures much cleverer than ourselves—know enough to avoid at all costs. The kind of heat that causes us to envy the sow, supine in her slop, and the worm, cool in its earthen cavern. The kind of heat that made insane people thrust their heads in ovens and sane people stick theirs in freezers*.
(*excerpted from the novel The American Dream of Don Giovanni)
