In Praise of August

It's the sound, don't you think? The low whir that could be a breeze on a hedge, until you realize that there is no breeze and that you live in a high-rise. So it must be a generator someplace, or an old fan with rubber blades. The sound Definitely. Maybe it's the light: the way it slants like a guillotine on a dark wall, or fills the moon so that it glows meekly like a pale bruise on the night. Of course. The light. Or is it the heat? Could be the heat too; dead-quiet heat, seems to arise from inside your head, which feels funny these days, wobbles a bit, like a loose chrysanthemum. Or the empty space: streets wide as runways, houses flat against the white sky. Where did everybody go? It's the space, don't you think?

It's the month. Weird August. Hallucinatory August. The month that the world escapes from. Not coming in like a lion. Not known for its showers. Not known for its flowers. Not busting out all over. Not. There is no August Song, and if there were one, it would be sung by Yma Sumac in an altitudinous register no one could hear but a dozing dog, who would cock not an ear, stir not a bone. Not. These are dog days, after all, in which the mind, suddenly deserted, goes nuts and nowhere.

Think that nothing of importance ever happened in August? That's how much you know. The first execution by electrocution was performed in August 1890. Judge Crater disappeared in August, plumb vanished from the middle of Manhattan. Britain's Great Train Robbery was pulled on Aug. 8, 1963, and Trotsky was murdered on Aug. 20, 1940. The month is famous for violent acts. In August 1914 Germany got World War I going by declaring war on everybody, and in August 1792 a Parisian mob stormed the Tuileries Palace. (That was before everybody started leaving Paris in August.) In August 1907 the first motorized taxicab made its appearance on the streets of New York; more violence still. The Kellogg-Briand Pact was signed on Aug. 27, 1928, without which there would be no world peace. Tony Bennett was born on Aug. 13, 1926, without which there would be no Tony Bennett.

Think that nothing is happening in August this summer? Hold onto your hat. For starters there is the Missouri State Fair, which opened in Sedalia expecting to attract 300,000 people, largely because of Jonny Rivers' Aquatic Mules. The act consists of a trio of mules that jump from a 30-ft. platform into a 6-ft. pool of water. "Believe it or not, it's a pretty good show," says Diane Larkin, the fair's publicity director.

At the state fair in Iowa, which is expected to draw as many as 600,000 people, an artist, Duffy Lyon, created a sculpture of Hansel, Gretel and their gingerbread house, entirely out of butter. This broke a long-standing tradition in Iowa. In past years the fair featured only one butter sculpture: a cow contained in a refrigerated case. Of course, a cow carved out of butter has a material integrity that Hansel and Gretel lack, but the new work is in flesh-tone colors. Lyon reports that the crowds "stand there with their mouths open. They've never seen colored butter before."