All born screaming
As long as the AQI is above 100, I’ll be here in this dark room singing St. Vincent.
Summer is the cruelest season.
I’ve believed this since childhood, languishing in the unstructured days. My eyes would glaze over while paging through a novel, sitting in a wooden chair at the kitchen table, breathing musty air from the rumbling swamp cooler mounted in the window beside me, and fantasizing about the air-conditioned movie theater that I, a sixth grader, could not afford.
I’ve also understood since childhood that viewing summer as dreadful is a deeply unpopular opinion and I’ve worked hard to keep it to myself. I’ve already written about my 12th birthday, but it embodies this creeping dread and my bafflement that no one else feels the same.
I turned 12 in August 1991, a tinderbox summer in the Salt Lake Valley. For a celebration, a handful of friends and I spent the afternoon at Magic Waters, a rundown waterpark next to the freeway and the state prison. Magic Waters had the reputation at my elementary school for being the place where a waterslide “snapped in half” and a kid two grades down from me broke his leg. I mean, that was the story he told and we all believed it. The place had “death slides” that were damn near vertical at intervals. The 16-year-old “lifeguards” would let you do anything. Once, before puberty removed much of my bravery, I took a running start and swan-dove into the slide. My body seemed to free-fall for two or three seconds before I crashed into a hard surface that held barely a trickle of water. Despite the low water pressure, my momentum was such that I ricochetted through the half-tube like a pinball, leaving strips of skin on the hot plastic. I was lucky to be an 11-year-old. At 45, a move like that would put me in traction. As it was, I still had scrapes and friction burns across my back and limbs. Magic Waters was a death trap. Still, it was cheap, it was close to home, and it rarely shut down when thunderstorms rumbled into the valley.
My birthday party happened on a stormy day. I recall streaks of lightning overhead as we stood atop the death slide. The sky grew ominously dark and the slides emitted strange popping sounds. Still, we persisted in scrambling up the stairs, bashing our bodies down slides, and splashing into stagnant water. None of my friends seemed worried. If an adult didn’t stop us, it must not be unsafe. But I felt increasingly uneasy. This anxiety hit a fever pitch when I noticed a flicker of orange flames and black smoke billowing from the Point of the Mountain. Presumably lightning or something else had started a grass fire. My friends mumbled things like “cool” and “crazy” but no one else seemed frightened. I just gulped down my dread because I didn’t want to seem uncool, but couldn't they see it? The black clouds, the lightning, the fire, the looming unreality of Junior High that was now just days away, if we survived that long?
Now, thirty-something years on, it seems like the apocalypse that summer foretells is becoming more obvious to everyone. The first three days of this week were the hottest days on Earth in recorded history. Across the West, fires have flared up with such ferocity that people can barely outrun them. The beautiful town of Jasper, Alberta — the backdrop of a few of my favorite memories — was overrun by one of these fires. As much as half of the town burned to the ground. Even though Colorado has had a relatively quiet fire season (so far), we have been inundated by the smoke from fires many hundreds of miles away. My asthma becomes more pronounced every year, and I am done with the delusion that mental toughness and the power of positive thinking are enough to grit through high-AQI and ozone alert days. If the air quality is bad, I say indoors. I’ll go a day or more barely seeing the sunlight. I draw the shades in my house to temper the heat, and also because views of haze-shrouded hillsides leave me in a funk that no amount of indoor pedaling next to a HEPA filter can cure.
It’s hard for a lot of people, and I do not take comfort that others are joining me in this seasonal depression. I wonder how we can hack our way out of it. The heat, fire, and smoke will not abate in our lifetimes. That meme of Homer Simpson comforting Bart as he complains “This is the hottest summer of my life” resonates — “No, this is the coldest summer of the rest of your life.”
Disingenuous positivity will not go far as this meme becomes increasingly true. How many summers will pass before I can’t go outside at all? Before many of us can’t?
Even with all of my privileges, I’m not sure how I’ll cope if my worsening asthma combined with increasingly toxic air leads to long-term indoor cloistering. I pedal my indoor bike with images of routes I traveled in June projected on the big screen, and marvel at how long ago this trip feels. Last week, I rode a simulation of “Colle dell’Agnello from Samperye,” a 20-mile, 5,700-foot climb that my friends and I descended while riding the Torino-Nice Rally route a month earlier. As I neared the virtual pass, a memory washed over me, evoking a feeling of comfort and hope. Now, when I need a pick-me-up, I’ll cue up the song and return to the memory. It’s a moment far from this shuttered room, in a place that was cold and expansive and filled with possibility.
Before that moment, I had climbed to the summit of Col Agnel while listening to music I downloaded just before the trip. The title track from a new album from St. Vincent helped me power through lung-busting grades of the final few hundred feel, so I kept hitting the back button on my little Shuffle and huffing along to the relatable lyrics.
I have climbed power lines and mountains
Just to feel above the ground
I have crawled out your hallowed houses
Just to feel my headache pound.
I feel like graffiti on a urinal in the abattoir
Well, it goes and it goes
I can't stop my legs, I can't feel my feet
I own nothing and nothing owns me.
I reached the col just as the song faded into a quiet instrumental and pushed pause. I chatted with my friends and a motorcyclist who wanted to know all about our trip, had my photo taken at the border marker, ate a snack, and had almost forgotten about St. Vincent when I climbed back onto my bike. Absentmindedly, I restarted the music. In all of my repeats, I hadn’t realized there was a whole second half to this song. The refrain was a single phrase, a long exhalation backed by an increasingly forceful techno beat.
All born screaming
All born screaming
All born screaming
All born screaming
And on and on. I accelerated through the switchbacks in a snow tunnel, white walls that seemed to hold me in space as I rocketed toward the unseen valley below. The refrain continued, louder and increasingly high-pitched. My heart beat to the rhythm. The air was intensely cold but I barely felt it. I was no longer in my body; I was incorporeal, a burst of energy streaming above the world. It was a feeling of complete freedom. The feeling lasted just a moment, but it was so intense: As though I stuck my toes into the liminal space between life and whatever comes after.
All born screaming
All born screaming
All born screaming
All born screaming
By the time the song was over, the moment was long over. I wondered if my friends had fallen into the same vortex, but quickly pushed those thoughts away because they were silly. I didn’t want to seem uncool, but couldn’t they see it? The clouds, the snow, the mountains, the intense and oh-so-brief respite from the looming unreality of 2024?
Last night, my sister and I discussed Beat’s incredible ability to start an endeavor on the struggle bus and only become stronger as he goes. Beat doesn’t quit things; it’s not because he’s stubborn, but because he’s genuinely enjoying the ridiculous ride. My sister, who doesn’t come from an endurance background, summed it up well:
“He gets over his mental struggle and just lets go, and I really think that’s the key to life,” she said. “It’s a good metaphor for life. You still go through the human emotions of this sucks, I hate this, why do I do this to myself? But you get through it and you somehow become a better person for it. You have more meaning for life, more zest for life.”
It’s a simple sentiment. I’ve probably expressed it before. But this is the key to life, isn’t it? You just … let go. You swan-dive into that water slide. You take your hands off the brakes and rocket into the future, understanding that it’s going to be hard, it’s going to be painful, it’s going to be mired in grief. But you get through it. And you become stronger, more empathetic, more appreciative of the good. You dip your toes into the void and realize the water’s not so bad. You decide to embrace your freedom, not fear it.
As St. Vincent sings, “I own nothing and nothing owns me.”
We’re all born screaming. But we all figured out that there are better ways to breathe.
That last line hits. Magic Waters brought back some memories. I always knew we were close by when we spotted the hang gliders floating near the prison. Weird location.
You should move to Scotland. Plenty of mountains and it is never hot even in August. Never any fires or dust either so the air is pristine.