We’ve had a hot stretch here in Vaguely Defined East Coast City for the past few days, the kind that’s both welcome and unsettling in equal measure. I didn’t have the opportunity to enjoy the beginning of it as much as I would have liked since I had to be on campus to work, but the second day (yesterday) I was at home much of the day and went out to the park to hang out in the sun and read. I was the only person really deliberately trying to tan and I have to confess I felt faintly ridiculous laid out in my speedo, feeling extra pasty, but I also have a sneaking suspicion that everyone is just counting down the days until summer is finally, inarguably here, because we all fucking need it. It’s been a weird winter and a strange spring. People have more or less returned to their normal life—I haven’t been masking really at all for the past couple of months—with tender caution and reckless abandon. The winter felt like limping through a hangover, hoping against hope that the headache will pass. In the sun, I felt like maybe it finally would. I drank a weird health food root beer to which I’ve gotten briefly addicted this past week and read Proust. I wrote a little bit for the first time in a while, on a new project to boot. I feel these days like little more than an enormous plant, photosynthesizing happiness in the sun when I get the odd chance, which hopefully will soon become more frequent. It’s supposed to rain for the weekend: that’s fine, I can hold the sun in my memory for a while longer.