.hothothot

it is hot here

steaming boiling sizzling burning searing humid sunburned broiled bare
feet on pavement at high noon hot

the kind of hot where sweat pours off your face, tears of salt rolling
stoic down your forehead and pooling in the corners of your eyes

swirling down the spine and soaking the back of your shirt within minutes

sweltering

your entire body slick with sweat - as you sit in the shade - doing
nothing - trying to breath

and some days its not so bad - some days you feel pretty proud of
yourself - functioning normally at 115 in the shade......

stepping into a sauna at 5:30 am......

and other days - it sucks the air from your lungs - tangles your
thoughts into teaming volcanoes of sludge - creeping up your arms and
legs and settling down with a horrific lethargy

maintaining delirious discussions with yourself as to whether or not you
have it in you to walk 2 yards - or to get up off the cement floor your
laying on

but you do get up

and you do go to work

and you do draw water from the well

and you do walk in the sunshine

and you do realize the greatest lesson to be learned here - that you are
always stronger than you think you are -

you experience that most precious aspect of being human - the power to
endure - the power to rise above - the power to surprise yourself

and yeah, its only heat - not starvation or genocide or paralysis or
clouds of whirring locusts eating all your crops - but I am enduring it

and i no longer have to dread it

and i am that much more ready to do the next hard thing

to picnic in the next charred and withered landscape

because once you strip away comfort

you realize you don't need it

and that

is liberation