Between Two Rivers

On degrees of understanding.

1.

In geometry, a normal is a line that is perpendicular, or orthogonal, to a surface. This means that the normal makes a right angle—an angle of 90 degrees—with the surface.

The word normal, which also means “usual” or “average” or “standard,” derives from the Latin norma, the term for a carpenter’s square: a tool used to measure right angles.

When a line makes an angle of more than 90 degrees with another line, the angle is obtuse, a word which is also used to mean “indirect” or “deadened.” It derives from the Latin obtundere: to beat against, to blunt.

When a line makes an angle of less than 90 degrees with another line, the angle is acute, from the Latin acūtus: “sharpened.” Acute can also mean “serious,” “intense,” or “urgent.”

2.

I am thinking about these terms as I watch the local weatherman deliver his morning weather report. Standing in front of a map of the tri-state area, with each state’s county lines intersecting at so many angles—too many to count—he waves his hands as he talks about the heat.

The map starts to fill with colors that bleed across the lines. Small patches of yellow. Large splotches of orange. Wide patches of red: scarlet, crimson.

Then in white appear the names of cities and towns, and each one gets a temperature reading. Or rather, each gets a reading of the heat index, the temperature that it feels like if you’re stepping or standing or sitting outside in that city or town.

Of the twelve place names on the map, just a single one has a heat index below 90 degrees. It’s Montauk, at the very tip of Long Island, where the temperature ‘feels like’ 89 degrees. Among the remaining eleven, five have heat indices at 100 degrees or higher: four in central New Jersey and the shore, and Central Park in Midtown Manhattan.

How obtuse, I tell myself. Indirect, blunt, deadening. I imagine—indirectly see—what it’d be like to be outside: to feel as though the sun were beating the air, the buildings, the trees, the animals and insects with its blunt heat.

Soon I hear myself say this isn’t normal, this can’t be normal. I remember when the weather this time of year would top out at 90 degrees, just for a day or two. But then I also remember reading elsewhere—so many elsewheres, so many times—that this is the new normal: a consequence of the global climate crisis, years and decades and centuries in the making.

Then in the midst of my thinking, I realize that the temperatures are in Fahrenheit (of course), so I convert them to Celsius. Eighty-nine degrees Fahrenheit in Montauk comes out to 32 degrees Celsius.

That’s acute, I conclude.

That’s serious. Intense. Urgent.