Is kitten what everyone is calling everyone now, or is kitten just what everyone is calling me? Coincidentally, Michael abruptly said to me, "You should have a kitten. Why don't you?" There was something stern about it, the way he gets stern if he thinks I've not been getting enough sleep, or if he thinks I've skipped dinner. Anyway, in response to his kitten question I said something like, "No, no, I couldn't," which is what I always say, to others, to myself, but why couldn't I? I live my life trying not to start anything, as though at any moment I might disappear. It would be a terrible thing to disappear and leave pets behind to fend for themselves. But see, I've been doing it all wrong, pets are what keep you from disappearing. How didn't I know that, all this time?

I'll start small, with a turtle or two in the fall. I worry about pets too much in the heat, but when it gets cooler it will be alright. My brother had turtles when I was a little kid, and I can remember exactly what it felt like to have them walk around on my hand, on my knee, tipping around on my shoulder. That's what I want, the tiny feet.

Suddenly I remember my dream last night, which was full of detail, but mostly the junky kind. There was, though, one perfect part. I was walking to somewhere at night and up in the sky I saw a flock of planes, twenty at least, swooping around in uneven loops. I could see the dark outlines of their bodies clearly, and each had one red light glowing on its stomach. It took me a couple of minutes to realize that they were actually birds. I showed them to the person I was with and he said that scientists were using the lights to track their flight patterns, because at night, in the dark where no one could see them, they did remarkable things. Then they were gone and real planes flew by, each coming into our field of vision, doing a quick loop, and then flying away, disappearing into the clouds. The lights on the planes were in the shapes of constellations, and the bodies of the planes had the forms we use to describe them. The one that's clearest in my head now is Orion. I remember pointing and saying, "Look, there's the arrow."

Today is a strange sort of hot and humid that feels completely comfortable, maybe because there isn't much difference between the temperature on the inside of our bodies and the temperature out. It's a good reminder that summer is not even quite a month old, though it feels like I've already used it all up. I guess I'm going to have to start it up again, like one of those little wind up toys that walk and shoot sparks from their mouths. I have the gorilla. I'm going to wind my summer back up and let it shoot sparks.