the heat is freaking brutal
TLDR: This is what it's like to lose the geographical lottery.
Our inverter electric fan's number setting is at 10. 12 is the max. To give you an idea of how extreme this is, in December I wake up in the middle of the night to turn it OFF because it gets too cold.
Now. Well. I wake up in the mornings drenched in sweat. It was at a 10 all night. It does not get any rest, as I stay at home in the day, work in the nights, r do vice versa. She's really going through it (me, r, & the inverter fan).
The wind is non-existent. In January it used to make our little curtains dance and warp and draw a little bit of cold in our room through our big window. Now our big window plays a puppet show all morning. DIRECT SUNLIGHT in the apt. All day. I used to pray for times like these, when the unit we stayed at before had us breathing mildew everyday. Dear God. I am thankful, but this is just too hot.
This heat... this month... I cannot move without sweat being summoned out of the surface of my skin. It gets to a point where I imagine I am playing tennis like one of the guys on that scene from Challengers (Happy Anniversary). It gets to a point where during the day I wonder if doing anything at all is worth it.
I remember my ancestors. How the Spaniards came to our land and started the myth about our laziness. How all my childhood at school studying History, we were branded as lazy. It started then as a myth, then bled through modern Filipino behavior. Then I got older and read Rizal's essay. As it turns out our colonizers just labelled us that way because natives woke up way, way before sunrise to work (where the temp is cool) then rest doing the middle of the day, because it is such a pain to work with the hot climate.
That, and it was easier to exploit us if we were being gaslit.
Oh my god doing chores is a pain. Then cooking. It's been a few times the sweat come out looking like literal tears and I sweat through my scrunchies that I now wash everyday. Of course with the heat they dry just as fast. I love cooking and I do love home maintenance. I know this. I have to remind myself of not straying away from these facts.
Outside, there is some wind. It is important to note this wind is not a breeze. No, not a breeze at all. It is HOT. It is literally so much like the air that gets on your face when in front of a barbecue grill.
This week I found out that my neighbor keeps turtles right outside as well. Earlier I thought it was so profound to come across the idea of how come we separated ourselves from nature. But then the turtles are in this cage, its height more than an average person's, but a cage, still, in the middle of this city of concrete Everywhere, in which the water - I don't know where it came from - is not looking that clean. I pray they survive.
Still, we did separate ourselves from nature. I know this but it does not mean anything at realizing it you know. Me and r watched Hoppers last night and one thing I remember is that dialogue said by the main character inside the beaver robot's body. Something about making a difference. Is it really that possible or realistic, in a developing country, where Core countries dump their trash, exploited to hell so much so we get a free trial WITH THIS HEAT???
The rain will come, I tell myself. Me and r discuss about getting an AC unit instead of solely relying on our inverter electric fan who is now breaking her back supplementing us with ventilation all day. It is more expensive to buy it at this season. So with its cost in the store, the maintenance, and the ever-rising utility bill from a hella privatized company that puts additional charges on top of another every month, I honestly don't think it is worth it. I tell r to ask me again if I want an AC unit in December, and that is that.
I reminisce. I know it used to be worse when me and r did not have a fridge yet. This was just last year, when in order for us to get cold water we had to buy 5 PHP worth of ice tube bags in a store across the street. Both of us each has our own fan at night. Now we have 1 big fan and our own ice cubes... then I do everything. Chew on it. Hold it in my palms. Rub it on the soles of my feet and then I literally restrain myself from physically moving. And then I scream-type about how hot it is here on my blog.
A couple of months later the rain will come. I am sure of it, and again, like every year, it will be the worst typhoons that had ever come to our land. Typhoons and disasters that swallow, churn and move our lands, floods the rivers, levels neighborhoods and orphans children. There is a kind of cruelty thinking that we get to have both extremes because of where we were born in the world.
We have lost so badly in this lottery :@(
The other week I read discourse on twitter about leaving the country. It was political, of course. Not only did we lose the geographical lottery, guess we lost on having a competent government, too. Double whammy? One side was encouraging that if we do have the means, we should leave. Then the other side says something along the lines of how it is such a cowardice act to just leave.
Right now, I don't know. One too many times I have imagined what it would be like to experience the snow. Or being able to layer clothes or the sound of a leaf crunch in autumn. I would probably still complain about something then. I always do, but then I'd have more things to be grateful for at that point.
I would have come so far when we get to that point. All this work... in order to try to undo this loss. It would probably take a lot of courage to choose myself like that.