Day 59 - Sooner or slightly later

Friday.

Almost 60 days in! Literally.

It has been hot. I have been irritable. Leo has been a brick.

Book-reading has slowed, even though today I finished the seventh from the eight books that I got the other day. Brandes' Decision, by Eduard Marquez, a small book of 140 pages which I took my time to read, because it's essentially 140 pages of a stream of consciousness of a dying man which takes some effort to follow. The story is of a dying painter who recalls the time in World War 2 when he's forced to give up a valuable painting by Lucas Cranach to a Nazi, or lose his entire lifetime's worth of work.

Now the only book that I have left from that batch is the one of the thieving octogenarians. But fret not! During the limited one-time-off shopping spree two days ago I managed to bring back another three books. One more by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Love in the time of Cholera), one by Jose Saramago (Skylight), and a compilation of writings by various authors on the subject of death (The Inevitable: Contemporary Writers Confront Death, edited by David Shields and Bradford Morrow).

Amidst this heat life slows down to a crawl. I read that the clear skies are enabling a short-term climate warming because there's fewer pollution particles to block the sun from coming in. I also read that due to (actual) climate change, tropical and sub-tropical regions may experience such high levels of humidity that it will be fatal, because humidity obstructs our ability to regulate body temperature through sweating. This was originally projected to happen a few decades down the road but apparently it's already starting to happen, ahead of time.

I'm lazy to go hunt down the links (both I read through The Guardian) so you'll have to take my word on how we are all going to die a toasty death, sooner or slightly later. In the meantime mosquitoes enjoy my living, breathing flesh. What's in it for me?