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I’m planning weekly meals and preparing some dishes ahead, so I can read lazily on the couch longer. In Phoenix, the heat was a few degrees below average early this week, but I was just in Europe in the midst of their heatwave. One must conserve energy where possible. I love cooking, but I’d rather be writing. Sometimes when I’m writing, I’d rather be cooking. My life requires both, and both are more urgent, exhausting, and rewarding in the summer.

Last night, I melted thin-sliced zucchini and onions in olive oil. It took a while, possibly making my kitchen a few degrees warmer. I cubed an eggplant and, after putting the zucchini in a glass serving bowl, fried it in batches. On the stove next: a pot of water for medium shells. I added the fried eggplant to the zucchini, and then, in time, the shells followed. A shower of parmesean, and then thorough mixing. I ate the pasta over mixed greens, with some canned salmon, and a drizzle of balsamic vinegar. After all that, the kitchen was definitely a few degrees warmer, but we ate well last night and the leftovers will reduce today’s cooking.  

After a few decades cooking in the desert, I am reconciled to reality: The kitchen will get hot.  

Up early this morning with my three-year-old, I laid on the couch and read My Year in Paris with Gertrude Stein by Deborah Levy. I was half awake, the prose moved swiftly and circuitously. The universe wants me to like this book: Deborah Levy’s writing has guided me since 2020, this book was published on my birthday, Gertrude Stein was born in Pennsylvania, I was recently in Paris, and struggling with just how American I feel and want to be. I do like this book. Levy writes a novel about Stein, referencing Picasso, Cezanne, Matisse, the women they mistreated or took for granted. She references having brothers, reading Freud, Woolf, Joyce. She writes about, her characters contend with, being from somewhere and living somewhere else. Levy writes about Stein walking in Luxembourg Garden, where I walked a week and a half ago. A man asked me for the time, and I showed him my phone. He was excited to practice his English on me and told me he had Lyme disease and it was American-based message boards where he found the most information and help. In the summer, my brain is porous, slow, meandering.

After a few decades writing, I am content with the facts: The references will make it into the writing, but I don’t know how long it will take.

Being prepared for a heatwave is very different from having one come upon you as a surprise. I can cook and read myself through the Phoenix summers, even as each one gets worse overall, because my household has a car, a home, and enough money to meet our rising electricity bills. For the cities and people who are unprepared and under-resourced – what’s more terrifying and dangerous than the invisible force of heat?

Thank you for reading this newsletter while it’s in a summer haze. Subscribe or forward this email to a friend also sweating in the kitchen.

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