The heat sticks to me as I walk. Outside, flitting from tree to tree like a bird or a monkey. seeking shade, but shade doesn't really help because the heat is like burning oil that I can't clean from my skin. Cold shower after cold shower and the hot oil comes rushing back to smother my pores and seal in the radiant warmth.

I don't think I could ever get used to humidity. This kind of heat is so hard to run from. The best you can do is seal yourself in a dim room with a box hanging out the window and shush the heat out with artificial ice cold. Then when you leave that room the heat attacks you as before. It makes you sluggish and unorganized, distracted. Then you step into the cold room and suddenly become antsy. There's the need to move about, to DO something to balance the cold. But there is only one room with air conditioning and the rest is dripping. sluggish-antsy-sluggish-antsy-sluggish-antsy

Everything is room temperature. But room temperature is 96 degrees.

It's unreal. tomorrow I will climb aboard another airplane and fly to Northern California. Stay the night, pick up a car, leave for Montana. I will go from hot hot to cold cold to dry heat.

She said it's like Albuquerque.

I can't wait.

I am going to be in Montana doing "Field Work." I will be "collecting data."

Parentheses used because these terms don't describe my journey at all. I will be interviewing people with cancer pain. Indian people with cancer pain, people who are dying. Our elders, dying and in pain. this doesn't qualify as "field work." there are no words to describe what I will be doing so I downplay it by making it academic.

i'm scared to death.

i also feel like i'm going home.