the sun ate the city

it's hot in baltimore. really hot. when you open your window after sundown in search of a cool breeze of nighttime air, you get a hot city breath blown in your face instead. i sweat pretty much any time i move too much.
so it was hardly the first time i've walked to the pratt library in this sort of heat. but something about this walk was different. the heat started getting to me and i was just sweatingly miserable before i even got out of bolton hill. but as i walked i kept noticing these little smells and sensations. a brief scent of some sort of flower or perfumed air, the smell of fresh a/c blowing back out of a window, the feeling of the half-dissipated cold where it leaks out the sides of the walters museum... and for whatever reason, every one of them reminded me of the beach. even when i stepped out of my apartment, it was that same departure from the cold apartment into the blazing sun. i even swore i smelled the salty sea breeze a few times, but that was probably just the tiny salty waves rolling down my forehead and cheek. yum!
but anyways it was like this mini-torture, walking the 25 or so minutes downtown and all i could think about was getting out of the city and sitting on a sandy beach and submersing myself in water, oh man submersing myself in water. just thinking about it nearly stopped me in my tracks to look for the nearest, largest body of water. even the library's chilly a/c wasn't enough respite.
so i was thinking about the beach and how much i can't wait to go with my family in a couple weeks for pretty much the whole walk back. it was this incredibly day-dreamy state of mind (and probably about the worst way to traipse around downtown baltimore) but it was about all i had to sustain me through the walk. it got me to thinking how much i miss nature as a whole and how awesome the beach will be. a wide open beach! the ocean spread out before me! not this growingly claustrophobic feeling from block after block of rowhouses and office buildings. it's funny how when we went back to butler, one of laura's comments was how large our backyard was, and i guess i just always took it for granted (except maybe when i had to mow it).. and it's one strong argument for suburb over city, really.
i hope some of those whiney kids who talked about how badly they had to get out of butler are choking on skyscrapers and city air somewhere, just so they know how over-privileged they really were.