Dear my summer lassitude,

I have a few questions for you.

1. Why do I feel so tired at the beginning of the day, and also at 3:30 in the afternoon?
2. Where has all the watermelon gone?
3. Is it wrong that I basically only want to drink sparkling water? Along with limeade? And maybe sparkling water spiked with limeade?
4. And eat potato chips like they are LITERALLY going out of style?

And also,

5. Why does the poem I have been working on steadily through the summer now seem sort of pointless?
6. And why does this sort-of pointlessness now seem to infect any possible new poems I might briefly consider writing?

And:

7. having worked my way through a whole book series I have already read and reread countless times, as well as a television series that I have viewed and re-viewed countless &c &c, what else is there to do?
8. besides read the Louisiana-based crime novels I am currently reading, I mean?
9. and maybe amuse myself by fake-planning a trip to Morocco?

My summer lassitude, maybe I should just give in to you, and read (or re-read) something trashy out on the porch while drinking sparkling water, ordering travel guides to Marrakech, and then taking a nap.

But not yet. Because, even though a nap was beckoning me hardcore this afternoon, I hoisted myself and my almost-but-not-quite lax form into my sneakers and went to the gym. And then, I came home and made a new recipe for dinner. This dish wasn't everything I hoped it would be, my summer lassitude--it wasn't watermelon, in other words--but it was the little show of personal grit and will that I need to look again at my poem and manuscript, and possibly discover--or manufacture--a point.

We'll see, I guess, but just in case, maybe I better lay in some more limeade, a case of sparkling water, and a big fat watermelon. Nuts for the winter, you know.

htms