“Summer gets to be an old story.”
—Henry David Thoreau

T.S. Eliot called April the cruelest month, but in Austin, Texas, it’s September. Summer is winter here, and summer isn’t even officially over until September 22. The cursed sun pays no heed to anything official. You’re not out of the A/C until Halloween at the earliest. September here is just a cruel joke. When Northern Instagram fills with scarves and pumpkin spice lattes, your only solace is shorts in February. (Awful in its own way.) “Hot and sunny every day,” Bill Hicks mocked. “What are you, a fucking lizard? Only reptiles feel that way about this kind of weather.” It’s nothing right or natural. Nothing to be celebrated. Only endured.