You know what I love? Stormy summer nights.

It rained last night, again, blessings upon blessings for we in the Arizona desert whose summers haven’t seen significant monsoon activity since 2018. I was in pain again and decided to soak in the tub before getting into the shower. Despite the urgency of my intention when I received the bathtub liners last Sunday, I hadn’t actually taken a bath yet.

Turns out that the bathtub liners really work! It was strange at first. I thought of Dexter as I lined the tub. I thought of Psycho. Once I beheld the tub that was completely lined in plastic, I was a little creeped out by the idea of lying down in it. It was unappealing, and I wasn’t even sure that it would work, but I carried on with it because I knew it would be therapeutic if it did work.

I didn’t have Epsom salts, as I’d kept forgetting to stop off for them, so I used coarse grain sea salt, instead. The minute I found my comfortable position stretched out in the tub, my trepidation and doubt floated away on the surface of the water.

I’d unwittingly transformed my bath into a warm sea, forming both an enchantment and an elemental connection. It’d been nine years since I’d last taken a bath, so maybe I just wasn’t remembering it, but it seemed to me that the sea salt made the water extremely buoyant, bouncy and substantial like I’ve never felt bath water before. The water behaved like a solid thing propping up and supporting my upper back. Weightless and suspended in the warm sea salt water, I felt no pain. I closed my eyes in the dark, candlelit bathroom with the lingering scent of the frankincense and myrrh incense I’d used to cleanse the room beforehand, and I listened to Panda Bear’s album from 2011, and the whole experience was a mood, a trip, an escape from my body. It was 20 minutes without pain, and it was bliss. I remained motionless in a trance-like state, doing nothing but exist.

Then I got out and stepped into a cool shower to rinse off the salt and get clean. The tea tree oil soap I used is my new obsession. With its distinctive scent and the cool water, the shower fades away and becomes a rain forest. So I went from the sea into a rain forest, and then I sat down at my desk to listen to actual rain pouring down as I worked.

I’m grateful for my cozy haven of an office, especially at night, when I have candles lit.

On that note, I’m heading off to bed. Have a wonderful day or night, whichever’s the case where you are, my friends.