Sweat

“Horses sweat, men perspire, and women just shine and glow.” – Grandma

After living nearly 26 years in a house without air conditioning (and growing up in one, until I was seven, when we moved to a house that had the great novelty of central air), I don’t “glow.” I sweat. And my relationship to sweat has changed a lot.

I used to associate sweat solely with dancing (as in a two hour and forty-five minute advanced ballet class) and workouts, and thus virtue. Exercise sweat was noble and good. All other kinds of sweat were icky, smelly, and just gross.

A three-day heat wave over the Midwest has just broken, and now the eastern Great Lakes and east coast are in for it. But while we were in it, we did what we do in the heat: we filled the house with cool air before the heat wave hit, and then we closed all the windows, drew all the drapes, used fans to push air around, tried not to use the stove, ate salads, drank water (or, in Angelic Daughter’s case, lots of lemonade) and languished. We sat around a lot. I made gazpacho. I read. She watched TV, or listened to music. We napped in the afternoon in our bedrooms, the only rooms in the house where I have made an (expensive) concession to the elements by installing window air conditioning units. And boy, did I sweat as I was doing that.

I don’t find sweat icky anymore. I just let it roll, and I let it do its job of carrying heat away from my body. My t-shirt may be soaked, my eyes stinging, my lips tasting salty, but all that goes away pretty quickly. Even my hair goes from soaking and slicked back to fluffy and curly (and frizzy, no getting around that). But I just accept it. And by accepting it I see it as expressing a different kind of virtue–I sweat my face off, and I don’t mind. It is what it is.

Sweating, particularly over the past three days, when the 95° heat produced heat indices ranging from 100-107° because of high humidity, made me think about how important sensory experience is to human beings. With every panicky article proclaiming how AI will wipe out white collar jobs as we know them, I think about how human beings can imagine things they can make with their hands, and then make them, in a way no robot could ever replicate. I think about how a computer can’t sing, unless it steals the voice print of a human being singing. It can’t come up with an original interpretation of a sonnet or a sonata, it can only mimic how a human being has already done it. AI can’t have a eureka moment in a lab, when a flash of insight leads to a new discovery. It can only report how a human being did it. AI can help humans find solutions to problems faster, but it takes a human to pose the question in the first place. AI can’t be genuinely curious: it needs a human being to give it a starting point.

I think about how a lot of white collar workers would probably prefer to spend their days creating, performing, making, or helping, free from the tyranny of the glowing screen, of reports, briefs, forms, or arguing with insurance companies. I think about sensory experience, emotion, appetite, the delicious feeling of lying down in bed after a hard day’s work, and about frustration, ennui, lethargy, lust, exhaustion, irritation, humor, relief, boredom, the delight in the flavors of an expertly prepared meal, and all the other possible human states of being that AI can never experience, only describe, second-hand.

AI can’t taste my sweat, feel it sting my eyes, or carry the weight of my soggy t-shirt. It can’t luxuriate in an afternoon breeze, or enjoy the acute satisfaction of an ice cold beer or a pint of ice cream. Yeah, the whole pint, dammit!

The broligarchs can’t take those things away from human beings. As they avidly pursue the loss of their humanity in wacky schemes to upload their consciousness to the cloud, or colonize Mars (howzat goin’ for ya, Elon? How many rockets have exploded, now?), never accepting responsibility for the horrific consequences of their AI deep-fake technology (stream “Mountainhead” on HBO or Max, a funny but chilling satire about it all), regular people can go on a picnic, paddle a canoe, laze in a hammock, or attend a live concert, while lying on the earth, looking up at the stars, and, even on a sweaty, humid night, be content.

Heading upstairs for a cool-off shower and a nap, I remain,

your salty, sweaty, living, breathing, thinking-that-an-ice-cold-beer-sounds-pretty-good-about-now,

Ridiculouswoman