Morbidly hot.  Heat index increases.  Water down the hatch with soda and tea.  Sweat releases.  Peeling myself out of my car, to re-adhere myself to the couch.  My legs go numb.  My lower back starts to slouch.  I imagine what a little joey feels like in his mama’s pouch.  Then I think of Australia.  An entire continent that now upsets me.  Let it go.  Let it flow and let it go.  Beneficence becomes even the bald men.  Especially the bald men perhaps.  Thich Nhat Hanh is bald.  Gandhi was.  Charlie brown is.  The Dalai Lama is.  Buddha was, most likely.  Come to think of it, I am in relatively good company being bald.  Except for the neo-nazis.  Not so cool.  The front yard is shaded enough to make me want to remove myself from the couch, and lie face down in damp soil.  Rich damp soil with pumice stones and firm edges of roots from larger trees.  Breeze on my face.  Television is off.  Birds distantly complaining about the heat make me want to fly to the Potomac and jump in.  This area must have been nice a hundred and fifty years ago.  Less crowded.  Easier to get around.  Easier to enjoy.  The country might actually have to face its debt in a month.  That is when China will come to reclaim what is rightfully theirs.  The simplicity that my heart searches for is slipping away quickly, and laughing as it flees.  My mental typewriter collects aphorisms throughout the day of mockery and complacency.  My children understand me better than my fellow staff, though they could never prove it in court, because they can’t speak.  Harry Potter is about to be finished, and I can’t say that I honestly care.  Maybe I will watch the entire series in a weekend five years from now and then read the books, but I doubt it.  I can’t even bring myself to read what I write.  That’s a lie.  I read it to understand what I was thinking when I wrote it.  What was I going through?  How was I hurting?  What was I longing for?  How was I inspired?  What keeps me going?  How can I tell?  If I laugh in a silent crowded room, will anyone simply know why without asking?  Why do we think things that are essentially weeds (bamboo) in other countries are cool enough to dress them up with polished stones and colored water?  I wish I knew how to work on engines.  Will the scar on my right knee ever completely disappear?  Why does Subway feel the need to release a pulled pork BBQ sandwich, and why haven’t I had one yet?  Oh life of mine, release me from the heat.  Release me from my own mind, and this life of mind.  Let me go, and let me be.  Let it flow and let it be.  Forgive.  Forget.  Drink a lot.  Go to sleep.  Dream of greener pastures, and cool watering holes with large polished rocks nearby, and bamboo growing from the cracks.  Put one finger on the globe and spin it.  Begin it anew with a fresh mind.  Type.  Read.  Send.  Repeat.