Heat and Relief.

Heat

It does something to you.

When it is 70 at 7 am and you know that it is just going to go up from there. It makes you full of bitter rage. You burn with hatred for the sun, and for your fellow man. The six blocks to the bus makes sweat break out in rosary beads on my forehead, each one slowly rolling down into my eyes, they sting like someone else's tears.

The soundtrack becomes Crossroads Blues, and country about sweltering heat. I'm preparing myself. Building up my mind for how I will physically feel in just a short time.

The population of the bus has increased ten fold with weather that doesn't involve snow. Three people ask me for something at the stop. Cigarettes and money, this is all they ever want. I want to have pity but it is hard. I am hard. It is like the heat has hardened me some. Like it has cauterized something vital shut. I should have a heart and a soul today, but it isn't here. It lays in another place. Hidden, a hidden heart. A story only the most nerdy of my friends have heard, and a story that only I think I really feel.

A man gets on the bus behind me.

He moves and twitches to much. Over active in his movements to the point that I want him to stop moving for ever. I seem to burn with irritation. The bus moves, someone honks at it. The bus driver swears and honks back. Tempers are rising again. 7:15am and the mercury lifts and lifts and lifts like it never wants to end.

Twitch answers his phone. He is in his 50's at the youngest. He starts talking about Facebook and how he was talking to one of his girlfriends from when he was in Jr. High and how she hasn't mentioned that she is married, and that she seems friendly, and that he hates the internet so he will give her his number. Then he says, "Should I tell her that I just got out of prison." He keeps talking, overly loud. All of us on the bus now know that he has been to prison.

I just want him to stop talking.

I want so many people to stop talking. There are just to many people everywhere. I don't care most of the time if I'm one of the people that stops talking. It isn't suicidal, or defeatist, it is just that the whole world needs relief.

This heat.

I read about community, and freedom, and a change that I can really understand. One where we live like there is no tomorrow to make sure there is a better tomorrow.

Stop talking.

My stop is up and I walk into work. There is air conditioning, but it is hot still. It is 7:30am and when I pick up a thermometer in the kitchen it says that it is 95, then I watch it move up a little more. I work, I sweat, no longer beads but trails down my back, into the bandanna on my forehead. I don't want to talk, I don't want to say much. I don't want to use the energy to make hot breath into the air for the sake of idle chatter. I stop talking.

For one shift I'm the living dead. I have no goal, I have no purpose, I have no aim save, "Finish work and leave, get out of this heat and into less heat."

Political treatise and taste in music movies and books all flee me. There is nothing but the hidden heart and the heat.

She is one day away.

The heat is here now. It is here now and as I get ready to finish the day of work it is all I feel. I walk out the door, damp form sweat and the cleaning of a professional kitchen. I stink and I'm bleeding a little. I know that I ache but the sun beats down on me so hard that I can't find the energy to care. The line in the kitchen was hotter, but this heat is just as bad.

Back to the bus.

I get on, the next guy argues about the fare. The driver won't let him on, so the passenger gets nasty and pays the rest of the fare. Then he answers his phone. He cusses out the driver via a conversation with the person on the phone. All he can say is fuck this driver, damn mexicans, they should shoot them all and the like.

We get to the station and there are cops.

Another guy on the bus calls someone. Lets them know he is running late because of some trouble on the bus. The other end tells him that his appointment has been canceled. His voice bellows, "WELL YOU KNOW WHAT!"

The other end hangs up on him.

He is rocking back and forth with anger. He seethes for a few stops then calls back. "I'm all the way down fucking town and I don't need to be. This is ridiculous! I'm all the way downtown and it is so FUCKING HOT!"

I want him to shut up. All of them. Voices gone from the world. The bus closes in and stifles. I feel anger rising up. I feel The Fear like I haven't in a while.

Its my stop and I'm off and I walk with a purpose. I want to leave, to be gone, to walk out of the city. But I walk home, into my room. I still sweat, I feel like I reek, I shower, I sit, I drink, I turn on the TV until I sleep.

I want to shut it all out.

Relief

With sleep comes cool. I don't even notice when it happens it just comes in.

I wake with the sun and a cool breeze blowing over my stripped down torso. She is on her way and she has brought relief with her. Cool air. I move through my day in a unhurried and less annoyed way. The steady stream of cool wind seems to give everyone a new bit of life.

I still hear the voice that says, "There is a time coming. When all of us will have to survive. And many won't." And it still fills me with a kind of anticipation. The kind that realizes that we have lost track of the rhythm of things. We don't remember the hot and cold. We only remember the discomfort of moving from controlled climate to controlled climate. There is joy in a snow man, or in the popcicle on the sidewalk.

More and more we are losing out way. The heat is trailing off though. As I walk the city I don't feel like dieing. I just feel like moving.

I go home to wait for her.

There is music and distraction.

And soon her.

Her in my arms, her voice, her hands, her stories.

I doze and drift. Dreams and a cool breeze on a warm day. She comes in and the embrace never ends. We hold and hold and hold, and fall into bed, and the heat turns to white hot and I feel like I'm going to burst. With joy, with love, with passion. I feel like I'm on fire, and all of the heat of the week has built up inside me to make me want to destroy, and fight, and rage war. And it is all coming out of me in her arms, she is holding me, and I fall into her. My heart spirals, and she is close beyond close.

There is thunder. And the cordite smell of burnt ozone. It isn't to close but the clouds are coming and the thunder is more frequent. And the rain starts to fall harder and harder. And with her comes relief. With her comes the perfect story. With her comes hope and desire, love and anger all wrapped into one.

The rain comes down, and I listen to her talk. I listen and watch and wonder.

Someday there will be a time when we will have to survive, and if I don't survive that is fine. Just give this place relief.

Lord knows I needed it.

More rain.

More rain.

File under Virtue and Agency.