August. Daytime temperatures in the city routinely reach the mid to high thirties. Outside, heat radiates from pavements, buildings, car engines and the exhausts from air conditioning units; it feels hotter still. Outside the air is heavy and it seems you could melt. Unsurprisingly people seek refuge. Seek shade. Head inside, to shopping malls, department stores, indoor plazas, covered passageways. Inside, where the sun is blocked and those heat-expelling air conditioning units work their magic to chill the air, where one can recover a sense of equilibrium.
Heat
O wind, rend open the heat,
cut apart the heat,
rend it to tatters.Fruit cannot drop
through this thick air—
fruit cannot fall into heat
that presses up and blunts
the points of pears
and rounds the grapes.Cut the heat—
plough through it,
turning it on either side
of your path.
Atmosphere
Summer days, the light and heat of the sun filters that dull the senses. Glimpses of shimmering waters, softly floating cloud formations, graphic shadows and silhouettes drift across one’s consciousness, fragments floating out of a fervent dream.
A midsummer night’s dream
Early August. The midday temperature is 34° My weather app tells me it feels like 44° and the humidity is 64%. Midsummer in Tokyo; a fever dream.
A cyclist turns the corner, and I watch my reflection move across her face visor. The sun on my skin, burning in the relentless heat of the day. Walking in the shade of a park to a soundtrack of invisible chirping cicadas; the air is still. In the welcoming controlled climate of a department store, old folks escape the heat, like the urban climate refugees they are. It’s said that much of south Asia will be too hot to live in by the end of the century. Sweat runs down my brow. In the long afternoon shadows a young boy patiently devours a small mountain of flavored shaved ice kakigori. His mother sits beside him sipping a seasonal fruit frappucino. Elsewhere a mass of people spills out of a train’s refrigerated carriages onto a stifling station platform, the doors impatiently closing behind them.
Are you sure
That we are awake?
It seems to me
That yet we sleep, we dream.
Dusk. The dark indigo skies are streaked with pink. A waiter splashes bowls of cooling water on the pavement outside the entrance to his just-opened restaurant. Animated voices drift from a rooftop beer garden. Faded paper lanterns hang in a narrow alley, their dull glow diffused by smoke escaping from a restaurant grill. Vibrant pink watermelon slices are dotted with black seeds glistening with the juice of the fruit. Young women in boldly patterned yukata add dots of color to the night. Fireworks beckon. Explosions of shimmering light. The city exhales and I find myself in a maze of empty streets, enveloped in the balmy warmth and calming silence of midnight.
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