It is often said that the most powerful ignition of memory comes not from sight or sound but from smell. This is probably true, but today I thought of another one: weather. It's a warm day today, warm and sunny and blue, and this afternoon I was walloped by something pretty powerful. Last year at this time I was falling in love, and I don't know, something about short-sleeve shirts and mild temperatures must have wormed its way into my subconscious somehow. I'm no longer in touch with this woman but I suddenly want to call her. The last time the weather was warm, the last day we had like this, I went home from work and we talked all night.

I have fallen in love twice in my life, and both relationships began in the second week of June. Karen might have some kind of astrological insight into that (I think it was just a coincidence, myself), but there's some connection that's been forged from that for me. Soon the days will be even warmer, in the eighties and then the nineties; the evenings will go on and on, and I'll look around and wonder where these people went. Somehow it just doesn't seem right to enjoy these things alone, these things of summer; this air conditioning, these blockbuster movies, and squinting into the sun.