Adriana doesn’t do well in the sun. She learned that at an early age, and as a child, she’d watch documentaries about the royal family, witnessing London’s gloom-ridden skies and saying to herself, “…that’s where I’m supposed to be.” Instead, she settled for Portland, just before we’d met, but eventually moved back down to the sun and smog for me.
In the summer months, she crams all activities into mornings and dusk. The middle bit is for slow movements, indoors. Lounging with the animals and taking on tasks at leisure. On Sundays, I wake at 5:30am to surf, which I look forward to all week. This past Sunday, she decided to use me as her alarm clock with a plan to beat the sunrise and wash her car before the heat makes the water disappear without the chance to hit the ground.
When I returned and saw her car shimmering in the driveway, I realized my Jeep was in an embarrassing state. It’s a 1998 Cherokee Sport, so it wears dirt well, as it looks like I may have just returned from an off-roading adventure… but this wasn’t that. I could no longer recall the vehicle’s specific shade of green, the grime thick and all-encompassing. Despite the heat, Adriana joined me, which I was grateful for. The sun was pretty brutal, even at 11am, and as we got going, there was no way to differentiate beads of sweat from water trickling down each other’s faces.
Toward the end, I grabbed a soccer ball (that I’d found in the bushes at the park a few days earlier) from my trunk. I convinced Adriana to avoid fainting for just 5 more minutes and stand opposite me on the lawn. It wasn’t long before she turned it into something competitive––trying to prove to me that she still had it––and sent the ball soaring into traffic. She yelled out my name as I ran into the street, my bare feet cooking on the asphalt.
I hadn’t felt that sensation in what seemed like decades. Images flooded in. Climbing out of the public swimming pool, shivering as I tried to find the wet spots on the concrete to avoid the scalding. Rushing back from the snack stand to the sand at Malibu Beach, both hands dripping in red, white, and blue from the firecracker popsicle that I carried like a torch. Pacing in the driveway on my phone as a teenager, talking to a girl after rushing out the front door without shoes to maintain some semblance of privacy from my parents.
As I returned to the lawn, Adriana told me I was crazy. But the truth is that I liked the feeling. Someone once told me I choose suffering. In many ways, they were right. A little bit of suffering is necessary, though. It has a way of burning the memories in.
THE RECORD CLUB
Last week’s selection was The Beatles - The White Album (1968)
You can find my ramblings on last week’s record in the comment section below.
This week’s selection is…
Week #10
My Morning Jacket - It Still Moves (2003)
RECORD CLUB THREAD
THE BEATLES - THE WHITE ALBUM
This was Sean's pick, because Sean's lifelong mission is to get me into the Beatles. Yes, I am one of those outliers who never found my way in. You can throw your stones at me, or do the whole, "dude, how? It's the Beatles," thing, but there are others like me. They just hide in the shadows. I'm out here admitting it. Anyway, the ratio of barn burners to silly/campy songs on this record was much more to my liking than Sgt. Pepper's, which was Sean's last attempt at selling me on the Beatles. And I will say that "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" is one of the greatest songs of all time. I previously thought that was a George solo record song and had no idea it actually appeared as part of the Beatles' catalog. If I had to pick a second favorite, it'd probably be "Happiness is a Warm Gun" and I may have been pushed toward bias upon learning that Radiohead borrowed the structure for "Paranoid Android".
I’ll keep fighting the good fight!