the rix mix

July is a down month for me, like a summer seasonal affective disorder. I'm subjecr to the more common SAD, in late fall, although that hasn't bothered me so much the past two years. In 2003, facing a seemingly insolvable predicament, the July depression never quite lifted. That was a scary time. In 2004 I came down with a flu in early July that lasted weeks before all the symptoms were gone. I used to deal with July - the heavy air, the heat waves, the humid overcasts - by driving down to Sewaren NJ nearly every early evening, on Arthur Kill across from Staten Island, where one could get a taste of the ocean a few miles distant, look at tugboats & barges, & watch the summer sailors nearly wreck their expensive boats loading them on to trailers at the municipal boat ramp. A regular crowd gathered every day for this comedic spectacle.

To help me cope this year I bought an air-conditioner, & it's eased allergies; every so often a punk outside gets shot & a lot of crack blows around the neighborhood,it inflames my sinuses. I stopped wearing socks with my sneakers. Then I gave myself a small budget for new clothes & a challenge to see how much I could get without going over it. I did quite well & even have one dollar left. Part of the project was going through old clothes & finding any I could rehabilitate, which produced a pair of tan trousers plus a short sleeve linen style shirt that I realized could be worn in a wrinkled condition. I started looking for a PC sale; the new one's gonna be a rock bottom package. I've resisted taking the train to the shore until there's some special event or gloriously fair day worth the tedious journey. I've turned down a number of WFMU fill-ins because they were early in the day & this is capable of causing me a lot of advance anxiety; too little prep time in the station library combined with a not entirely irrational fear of unreliable NJ Transit train service. Staying on a reasonably even emotional keel through July is more important. I learned three summers ago that prescribed medications like Zoloft can make matters worse. I'm quite capable of feeling lethargic, unsociable & dull-witted without them, thank you.