The Heat of The Moment

The state of my life right now, as I type this, is a slow boil. Figuratively and literally. Today is a furnace. It's hot and muggy. The house: get in your car, drive to Tuscon, check the temperature - 104 in the shade - find an aluminum tool shed, and climb on in. I feel like Steve McQueen rotting away in Ze Cooler. The baseball I toss against the wall over and over again is a metaphorical one. It symbolizes everything. Toss, bounce, catch. Toss, bounce, catch. I'm sweating the small stuff and the big stuff.  I could use a vacation even though I just got back from one. I've got a ton of writing to do; this is my job now, and the reality of it is that it's not much of a job, in the sense that I'm not making much money. And there's this: bills and the impending inevitability of having to look for a new place to live (we knew this was coming; with my grandma's death, her old house, our current home, became a piece of The Estate, a part of the will, and those things need to be settled). The edge of that frying pan, staring into a fire. I look down at the dog; he's panting and his eyes are wet, he's miserable, and even though that's roughly 33% percent of a dog's job I feel bad for him. I'm thinking about something someone told me a while back, or maybe it was something I wrote in one of many discarded "projects". The difference between youth and age - youth brings fears that you're a fuckup; age brings you that certainty. I'm sweating.