Salamander
7:50 PM, Tuesday evening. Salamander.
The humidity here is big and ponderous. It wraps snugly around you and sinks into your pores like heavy syrup. The sky is hazy — no real sun, just milky light. Now I appreciate air-conditioning, don’t get me wrong, but I also have to say:
I like the heat.
I’m the kind of person who gets cold easily — and then stays that way. It doesn’t take much to start me shivering. On the other hand, I tolerate heat very well. When I go to the beach I like to lay out on my blanket (which features the incredibly manly pattern of dinosaurs in swim trunks and shades frolicking along some prehistoric shore) and just bask in the light and heat.
Getting a tan doesn’t really concern me. I like to lay back, close my eyes, and submerge into that golden (almost liquid) warmth…
Can you tell that I’ve been thinking about my up-coming vacation to Myrtle Beach?
Today I was out buying suntan lotion and other beach-related stuff for the vacation. I also finally broke down and bought myself a new camera. I got a Canon Elph and I think that little gem is about the coolest thing since sliced bread. It is, honest-to-God, smaller than my wallet. Yet the Elph features a 2x zoom lens, flash (with built-in red eye reduction lamp) and a spiffy stainless steel body. It is an APS camera, so I can take regular sized pictures as well as wide-angle and panoramic shots, all on the same roll of film. I probably definitely can’t afford the thing but sometimes you just have to live in the moment and trust the future to shake out favorably on its own.
What the heck, maybe the impending credit card bill will supply the impetus (or the crack of that work-ethic whip) that I need to write and sell some new fiction.
“Carpe diem,” says the salamander…
— JWR, 7/7/98