Spirit animal

"I wish this would be the hottest summer ever," I heard a little girl in a bathing suit say to the man who had her propped up on his hip. She was small and unsuspecting. I could have taken her in a fight. Or at least knocked her out of the man's arms.

I do not wish this would be the hottest summer ever. I'm grateful for the window AC I got free from Craigslist, but not so much for the way it encourages me to burrow in my bedroom, with piles of critical writing stacked around me, an ice pack strapped to my head, and my dog sighing at me, "When did you get so boring?"

This means it's past time to go swimming. But not tonight. I'm off to my third play in as many nights, and I'll probably stay up past my bedtime again because summer makes me go nocturnal.

Like the wolves in my neighbor's truck.



I took these pictures for my friend Luke, who speaks to wolves, but today, mopey from inactivity and sunstroke, I just want to celebrate the sublime impulse that inspired my neighbor to buy these seat-covers.

Does he find them manly? Empowering? As a kid, I decided that the wolf would be my spirit animal, that it would appear to me in dreams as a guide. Is the wolf my neighbor's spirit animal, and does its image protect his truck from break-ins and wrecks? Does my neighbor, like Luke, appreciate the absurdity of stretching a kitschy obsession as far as it will go? Maybe he just really likes wolves.

Currently reading: The Spellbook of Listen Taylor by Jaclyn Moriarty. I'm a hundred pages in and kind of in love.