Perhaps heat is not the antithesis of cold but rather its antagonist. Imagine, if you will, life as an element -- a brazen force of nature that emerges from an existence unknown to even itself. Alternating its state as a less-than-sentient-being with a powerful, driving extremity that precisely, almost diligently slaughters all in its path like a laser run amok. Heat and cold, light and dark, wind and snow: all arbiters of our own daily temperments. We enter into their extremes not against our will but rather against our better judgement. A sane person would do everything in his power to exist in a realm where conflict is minimized. Instead, we step out into that darker world only to hurtle down jagged slopes with hunks of wood strapped to our legs. We swim into filthy water to rise above it on equally fragile chunks of timber. Nothing stops us from pursuing our own entry point into ego and the bottomless desires of our rather bland consciousness, where 'fun' and 'folly' coexist as equal partners in our endless quest for the novel that is new without being disturbing. Is it any wonder that I wonder about nature's fiercest forces doing battle with each other while we frolic amidst their raging skirmishes, as if the elements themselves were mere obstructions to our own eventual, inevitable, entitlement?
Put another way: the rain looking at an umbrella. Would the rain, if consciousness were contained within the DNA of each and every drop, tremble in senseless fear at such a device, or would its individual droplets of laughter reach such a hysterical level of uncontrollable mirth that the collective sound of a billion raindrops laughing in unison shake our sense of nature itself? Think of it! A storm execretes its forceful, prideful burst of water. We attach a flimsy barricade supported by metal (or plastic! ) as a kind of cone which will keep us dry so as not to stain or soil our precious leggings. The same rain that falls on the top of Mount Everest and eventually sinks to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, where it floats around inside of sunken ships where wartime skeletons lay so still, also must bounce off of the top of a Japanese schoolgirl as she rushes to meet her friends at McDonald's. Can we blame rain and wind, air and snow for getting bored with the frivolity of our lives! Even the elements need some lusty sexual thrust to their existence on this earth.
Which I is why I see such natural, ostensibly benign forces turning against each other -- heat resenting cold, snow sneering at sleet. Each imagining the other to be weaker in texture and frailer in tone. One can glimpse daily battles in the sky, the ground, the ocean, the field. Where apples fallen from trees have not fallen, but been pushed. (Bland brown bark fiercely jealous of the shiny red that glows so bright.)
I fear that a certain apocalypse is arriving on a daily basis. (Or perhaps it has been here since the first ray of sun angrily forced its way through the most stubborn of clouds?) One that humans, in all our useless egos, will not even suspect, let alone detect. We watch the night ram the sun into submission and think: Of course -- such is the way of life. Fall sucking summer's sweet nectar dry makes us mourn our own lost weekends, but what of summer itself? Who mourns for its complete eradication? When the wind whistles at my window tonight, I will wonder if it is taunting or pleading.
