and [un]fuzzy dice

of course, another innocently indecent (sounding) response to the swelter is: to give oneself completely over to being baked. this is almost as hard to resist as the first. really, it's so entirely satisfying to sweat. just drip and drench. there's the little issue of burned flesh that sometimes coincides with the whole enterprise, but that can be avoided.

if the swathing impulse to clutch at garments that cover, totally, is the first reaction, then this is that which follows when it becomes clear that, in this battle not of wits or rhetoric, the sun is not making any backing-down moves. classical joining when confronted with unbeatability. real or imagined saving of the dignity.

upon even minimal consideration, however, it's apparent that these (as is the case with all direct negations) are just equal-but-inverse (equal in that they are inverses) ways of acting—and, moreover, assessing an unchangeable state of affairs. and with the least amount of actual thought involved, i might add.

[the sound of a screeching gear change; we end up in precisely the same one, albeit with minor hearing loss]

it doesn't help that last Memorial Day was the only day i neither had Chem nor was working. what else to do but leave straight from the ER nightshift (on Sunday morning, 7am) and bike up to Charlotte, via Jackson, without telling anyone either that i was leaving or intending to arrive? and then have the whole "via Jackson" part become a "getting mired and, more importantly, Mei-jered in Jackson with flat out (inner tube) rebellion (shades of a disease i had yet to experience the full results of), having to call the Best Favourite who (you will recall) did not know that i was en route and so was unavailable either for comment or plea, admitting defeat (once he had returned to his phone-able status) and then having to wait in all misery and humiliation by the side of the road in Jackson, with only the smirking upstart for company."

which started me thinking.

although i am not really a person who does such, i was going for a bike ride today. upon said ride, i realised why i don't do said activity. and, truly, i tell thee: it relates to these two responses to temperature. or, should i say—their inherent absolutism. it is, you see, quite impossible to just cycle along the lake (as many purport to do), observing its wavy waves, placid brown/green/blue/whiteness—or whatever else it (also purportedly) has in terms of lovely qualities (see: i don't actually know what Lake Michigan looks like, despite all the tales i managed to spin about it to the [overly] inquisitive populace in Beograd. i believe it exists only insofar as i know that water is incapable of holding up an enwheeled human). it's a matter of what one is willing/able to settle for: to bike "along the lake" is to not bike to (and, obviously, via) Indiana; heading south, you really ought to just keep going—and north? well, i guess the Michigan UP, via Wisconsin, might justify one's being on wheels in the vicinity of the lakefront.

this also holds for running: the "5k on occasional sunny days (often amidst herds and involving Causes)" mentality is complete anathema; i want to go between 10 and 15 every day of the year. preferably in grungy cities (as though their scenery mattered, anyway) when it's "too _______ [hot, cold, storming]," i'm too _______ [busy, exhausted, in pain], and, in short, the whole scenario is, simply, Too.

travel, writing, sleeping, reading, spending money, knowing, being responsible, loving: same thing.

consistency is a feat to which many aspire and which only the Special achieve (to their great and eventual detriment).