a fellow blogger, salbaje, kvetches about the ungodly heat in the capital these days. manila by the breeziest of bays, that is.
i'm not sure whether he's really sniveling or just plain showing off.
so i told him, the stifling heat is great for his writing. i told him those brobdingnagian magic realist novels from latin america, those by gabo marquez, by carlos fuentes, etc., were mostly written during arid spells in that continent.
he was incredulous. in return, he gave me a rather serpentine analogy. he said the heat afflicts him the way it does a snake in the hay. something close to catatonia.
here in east coast, two weeks into calendar spring, my gut tells me those cold depressing winter days are finally over. and for the first time ever this year, i am slightly convinced, what with the vernal temperature creeping up to the fifties, i have a chance to be happy, after all.
now this is no time to diagnose me having had seasonal affective disorder (SAD) last winter. i probably had.
but what i was going to say is that being raised an island boy, heat has always been like air to me.
now that is too melodramatic, i must admit. more like greasy food, perhaps, or great sex. well, any sex, at all, really.
this morning on the bus home, i was drawn to two huge girls, queen latifah sized high school girls, sitting side by side.
pounds lighter without their down filled parkas, the girls looked really riant. oddly, they were not chattering nor were they fiddling with their phones.
they were just sitting there. one was looking out, the other looking straight ahead, a faint trace of a smile in her lips.
i have a feeling that had they decided to talk to each other, they would burst into this great ball of bliss and would soon start embracing each other. or highfiving or whatever it is that hip ghetto girls do now whenever they're happy.
they got off at the stop nearest PS 32. and i saw them walking towards their school as the morning sun got treed among the the still bare branches of the elms now breaking out with green buds.
the entire picture, it was so beautiful. for a moment there, i thought life would be possible without cold, without hurt, without anguish.
finally, i got to my building and saw that the most stubborn of snow piles has melted down into one dirty puddle. i gladly hopped over it.
walking up the staircase, i felt winded and giddy that i was convinced i could write the blithest of stories.