Summer Haze

Nothing but heat today. Sun rising in the brilliant blue sky and just a moment of cool air before its radiation cut through and raised temperatures into the 90s. Even without heavy humidity, the air hangs like a wool blanket, forcing every pore to loosen its internal faucets. Plants kept captured in clay pots suck up every ounce of water before noon, before the heat can evaporate what's left, by 1:00 they've wilted, loosing internal cell structure to transpiration. Brown patches appear on the lawn, and one looks for shade at every step. The sun gives energy to life, but the sun challenges our limits as well, fogs our brains, overheated and exhausted inside warm skulls. It drills into our vision, closing pupils and creating indoor blindness after a few minutes in the outside. But this is the existence of being here on Earth and I would not trade it for artificially cooled rooms, artificially dry, like those who live within them, sequestered from reality and so living unreal. It is no wonder here in the (dis)United States of North America we can barely find the time to know our neighbors or understand our colleagues or love our children. As everyone pursues the dream of conquest in their own personal fiefdom, they lose something vital. And this is just the citizens, the leadership, now even further removed, knows nothing of life, nothing of Earth, nothing of being true. The whole system rests upon a lie, and no one has the courage to point it out. For those who do are marginalized, ostracized, and otherwise rebuked. Who wants a culture of fear but those who stand to gain from it. And so, each excuse and every act of cultural loyalty marks you as a traitor to your deepest known truths. You may sit there and deny this, but you can not escape its grasp.