Dear Self,

Please don’t ever think you can permanently move to India, or Pakistan, or Ecuador, or the Philippines, or anywhere the median temperature reaches thirty celsius plus for more than three months at a time. Should you choose to do so, the resulting insomnia will likely strip your brain of its higher functions, and these notes to self will increase in frequency, until Self becomes your sole correspondent.

It’s almost 3am. I’ve been awake since quarter to two, driven by fan noise, intense nasal dryness and penetrating heat to leave JVL in the bedroom and descend to the lower floors.

On the bright side, my attempt to nap in Kari’s (much cooler) first floor room turned into me reading the first thirty pages of Mordecai Richler’s “Barney’s Version”, which I’ve been meaning to rip into for several years now. Less satisfying are the recurring nightmares I experience every time I slip into blissful unconsciousness, regarding the grotesque infestation of aphids that has blighted my poor climbing vines at the front of the house. I drift into sleep, and the pitter patter of millions of tiny footpads and antennae graze my cheek, and suddenly the aphids have turned carnivore and my head is their next entree.

So now I’m in the basement, defying my environmentalist concerns about excess usage of central air by having the lights and computer running, but what the hell. At three o’clock a girl needs what company she can get.

I think it’s time for me to write a long-overdue letter to Kari, addressed to Somewhere, the Yukon, C/O the Interweb. Maybe she’s awake right now, too, reading Kurt Vonnegut or John Irving or Zadie Smith or Dan Brown by the light of the Midnight Sun.

Sweet dreams everyone,
Pipes