Heat

By Daniel E. Kramer

This is where it is. The heat that trickles deep into the skin, burning in a warmth kind of way. That is what I remember about the days of summer as a boy. Working in the fields with my dad, hunting the mountains of Siskiyou County, scratching through the rocks of the desert as a good little geologist should.  When this kind of heat comes, you begin to know the feeling of flame and fire. Heat, radiating, pulsating, permeating the flesh; watery and susceptible to exhaustion and frazzle.

This kind of heat is a mental form too. It is not necessarily real or fake, but somewhere between, and relative to the rest of the values of temperature which are ongoing at the same exact time around the planet. While I sit here in my boiling office, the sun blazing down on the metal roof, with a temperature of 108 degrees, there is a place called Tierra del Fuego where it is only 23 degrees. Like the dark side of the moon, all things are relative to one another, haves to have nots, halves to a whole.

The lingering malaise, my slow and dull form of a heat malady, is weakened by working in it and adjusting to it. I have taken to appreciate its presence. Soon I will be dead and gone, unaware of the significance of thermodynamics, unaware of the instability at such a localized level, made instead aware of the less awkward and ever present steadiness of the grander and larger scale of the overall system.

Heat is the passion; heat is the soul wanting another, the body and mind tuning into the beings around us and seeking out the beautiful ways of a devilish love. Heat is the fire of lust mixed with the wanting of a thousand soldiers sent to the far away fighting fields, taken from their lover’s reach, their life placed at the whimsy of fate, a destiny determined by others.

We all remember the temperature rising in our body when we first met the love of our life, had that first kiss, enjoyed the company of a lover’s embrace. Like a volcanic eruption, a phreatic explosion, an orogeny of mountainous proportions, we all advanced into an unknown and awe-inspiring engagement of love.       

Molten rock is still coming to the surface of the earth 4.6 billion years after its formation, trying to find a way out, a way to cool down, and a way to calmly go back into the oblivion of forever coldness that is the universe. Even the world itself has no understanding of what is happening with this evacuation of flow, this modeled and swirled exhumation of time and space. Matter not though, the world continues to strive towards balance, just as we humans try to work out some way to cool our 98.6-degree bodies.

Memories of fires, burning embers ablaze in the night chase me into the next thought. I emerge from a tent, sleeping bags prepared for a long night’s rest, under the stars just waiting for the stories to come from my Father and Uncles.   Here in this memory, I am 8 years old again, holding my first pocket knife, looking so similar to my son, who will soon have his experience like this, supposing our flames don’t burn out before we can get there.  Look up, look up into the night sky little eyes, look at those bright stars above. Look at how some are faded, some still burning, some already burnt out for millions of years, just dead light traveling. Are these the temporarily immortalized light waves someone else in some distant time and place? Could any of us ever be so lucky?

May the heat of today and tomorrow come into my every being, whether it be when I am alive or dead, soil and earth or flesh and bone, and may the world keep trying to stabilize, equalize, and reach it's slow but inevitable loss of vitality; its permanent loss of the dynamic energy that we call heat.