"When it's not the heat"

For some of us, anything above seventy‑five degrees is already a natural disaster. The nineties — as it was here in Peekskill — are over the top and barely bearable. The humidity makes it worse, interfering with the body’s natural cooling system until the sweat doesn’t go anywhere, doesn’t do anything, and you feel overheated like a radiator in a hot car.

The old adage, it’s not the heat, it’s the humidity, has some truth to it. This heat wave has both — high humidity and high temperatures — forcing our bodies to work overtime just to exist.

Early morning is the only pleasant part of the day. First light, cooler air, a brief window of comfort that lasts until about ten o’clock, when you start to feel that first uncomfortable shift.

I thought I could create in the heat, could write through it. But I don’t know. I don’t think I did very well when all I wanted was to lie there in the cool air and do nothing, especially when everywhere else was so hot. I walked down to Washington Street — the Hudson was clear and beautiful — but no air was stirring. I couldn’t wait to get back home, close all the windows, and turn the fans on high.

Then I thought of all those years in San Francisco, so I looked up the temperature. Low pressure over the city, an expected high of sixty‑two degrees — the kind of weather you feel comfortable in. None of this one‑hundred‑degree business.