It’s getting hot. This weekend will bring a 90F weather. This is the time you wish winter was coming.
I hate hot. Maybe because of it I am missing Alaska again. I go through these bouts of not knowing what I am doing here in Pacific Northwest. It still does not feel completely like my place, even though I have lived here for four years. Maybe it’s the fact that there are just too many people in ever constant motion everywhere. Maybe it’s the fact that these people are also very different from people in Alaska. Often, they are good-doers — a word that always makes me think of Amélie Poulain and skipping stones. Except here, in Pacific Northwest, they do good more for the sake of making themselves feel better rather than really trying to improve the lives of others. I have witnessed it many times. The last time there was a girl on a sidewalk yelling “I am afraid you are going to be hit by a train!” from the top of her lungs at an old man trying to shuffle his way to Max train stop along the tracks. She actually made him cross a busy street so that he can hear what it is she was yelling at him. It would be comical if it were not so sad. The poor man stood in disbelieve for few seconds in the middle of the road then give her a “you are a crazy person” hand wave, crossed the street back to train tracks and proceeded to shuffle towards the train station. That defines the Pacific Northwest good-doers experiences.
Nevertheless, I am still here, and my dog is still here, and it is getting hot; brain-melting hot.
In spite of the heat, I still will take my dog for a walk, make bread tonight, and maybe even make a dinner from scratch. I cannot stop doing things that bring me joy because then it will be a defeat by the heat. I am Russian. I don’t like defeats. No matter how much I just want to fill the bathtub with cold water and submerge my body into its cool stillness, I will keep moving instead.
