Wait Until

She arrived in the southern city in the evening.

Strange—she thought—that such a pleasant breeze off the bay should be laden with such uncomfortable humidity. The humidity was all enveloping. She especially disliked the hot sebaceous feeling she had where the sweat beaded below her eyes.

Ugh! She said to the passing manta ray beneath the boardwalk. This is uncomfortable.

The ray stopped and waved the tips of it’s dorsals at her and said—Are you kidding me? Wait until July or August!

The Eighth Ring of Hell, lady! THEE EIGHTH FRIGGIN’ RING!

She no longer saw things as they were—or as she thought they should appear. She only saw the shadows of things—the palm tree: it’s fronds an effulgence radiating out of its top, but she saw only the shadow it cast on the street. She could not see the tree itself. That fire hydrant bisecting the crack of the sidewalk—only the shadow. The awning, the dog and it’s owner, the bicycle—only the shadows cast by the street lamps.

She missed her sea urchin lover and tidal pool in Maine. The north seemed more forgiving—but soon that would be just as hot and humid.

She was moving inexorably—along with everyone else—farther into the anthropogenic extinction event.

She resolved to try again and again here in the south.

One must imagine her happy in the midst of that drowning spit of land.

“Sometimes, you are twenty when you stumble upon an open doorway. Sometimes, you are thirty. Sometimes you are forty, fifty, or sixty. I remembered this when I felt like giving up, when I thought I’d pack all my notebooks and stories into plastic bags and put them away, when I thought I would resign them to the recycling bin.”

— Jesmyn Ward / Navigate Your Stars