Sunday, July 18, 2010

119 Degrees

Unfortunately, there's no way to put photos on this blog from an iPad. If there were, I'd show you the picture I took of my car's outdoor thermometer yesterday. It was registering 119 degrees in the middle of a big restaurant parking lot. Here's a link to it on Facebook, if you're really interested.

The official high has yet to reach 100. But the humidity has been so high this summer that heat indexes of 102-105 degrees have been daily occurences.

I am doing what I did last summer, which is to retreat to the Very Dark Room, lights usually off, and sitting or lying in the dark most of the day. I'm sleeping a lot. I'm also reading "The Zen Teachings of Bodhidharma", a collection of writings traditionally attributed to the monk who brought Zen to China. Red Pine is the translator.

Like many of the earliest Zen/Chan writings, it's much more straightforward than the stuff that came a thousand or fifteen hundred years later.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I keep an oven thermometer in my car here in Southern Arizona. At first I used a regular thermometer but two of them busted back to back in just a couple of days. The record I have recorded is 135 degrees so far. However, it feels less hot here than Oklahoma ever felt. Humidity is a very weird thing.

mcarp said...

I'm guessing you're dzaster. Good to hear from you again. I'd like to know more about your new life in AZ.