On Heat Island

People like to say “another day” in reference not to the renewed interest of the Earth to spin on its axis or to the immediate (oftentimes unwanted) ascertainment of one’s peripheral consciousness after a long and tiring dream, but to the circadian and chronological motion of their day-to-day activities at the workplace, in school, at home, or wherever they may constantly find themselves having to sort of fulfill some substantial obligation to an endless litany of drudgery – paid or unpaid that’s another issue. Be it a physical, mental, emotional, spiritual or financial aspect or state of affairs, an average person’s life is nothing but a complex string of routines, rituals and repetitions, each designed to test his patience, perseverance – and to some of us born with the will and intellect of a human being and the despicable stain of sin – the capacity to hold on to any metaphysical locus, of which the religious folk would usually refer to as God, Allah, Buddha, Shiva – a few of many other fancy, catchy, fearsome names.

Nevertheless, however seemingly repetitious and monotonous the day is, we cannot deny that no day is the same as the ones that had already passed. We don’t always wake up on the same side of the bed, and even if we do, we don’t always wake up to the same fetal position or hairstyle even. Crumpled bedsheets need to be washed after some time and replaced by a new one, while mattresses have to be flipped every six months at the very least. We get tired of cooking sunny side ups and sometimes opt for a scrambled egg or an omelette instead (if the attempt to flip it on the pan is successful), or simply skip the first meal of the day and head straight to work with an empty, grumbling stomach. Sometimes we start the day with a cup of hot coffee; some other times with something else. We all subconsciously thrive on endless combinations, in a limited range of permutations of space and time.

We might be confronted with the same day-to-day cycle of activities, but we never face them the same way twice, or thrice, or more: unexpected things always happen along the way. An evening news weatherman could dance around the television screen for as long as he wants, tell us about his prediction – sunny all throughout – and leave us running for the nearest shelter on our way to work the next day when it suddenly begins to rain. We may anticipate more rainfall for the rest of the week, forcing us to carry our umbrellas everywhere we go, but we can never know when heavy-duty plastic boots or just the simple tactic of staying at home would start to come in handy. Never can we ever be one hundred prepared for every unknown second that looms ahead of us. If we could, then lotteries, casinos, stock markets and churches and weathermen would cease to exist.

Nevertheless, we wake up to the dismal truth that we have to go through another day; that we have to work to pay our bills at the end of every month; that we have write essays with more substance, more clarity, with a better flow of ideas to get the grades we want; that we have to feed ourselves with the right nutrients and avoid whatever has become or could become detrimental to our health; that we have to always go through a cycle of joy and sadness, with the latter always seeming to have a more profound and longer duration in virtually any type of situation; that we have to go through every single hour, minute and second of the day only to realise at night right before we close our eyes that once we open them again and see the morning light pierce through the windows and into the depths of our skin we are instinctively going to require ourselves to get out of bed and try again to go through another vicious cycle of staying alive and making it through another day. To do the same things all over again.