Summer Languor



The light was unforgiving as it engulfed the city in flames, as seen through the dingy glass of a jeepney crawling down Mango Avenue. In the swelter of mid-afternoon, the city revealed itself in its contradictions: decaying Spanish mansions and skyscrapers reaching up into the sky, ambition crashing into apathy. In the din of traffic, tensions and appetites unmet thrummed, as impatience was palpable while we halted at each light, the driver shouting curses into the fetid air. Possibility and paranoia and chaos marked each transaction.

Resignation reigned as our vehicle stayed unmoving, caught in the inescapable churn. The heat was all-encompassing as we waited, suspended between memory and want, dreaming of moving ahead. This irascibility masked a deeper fatigue, born of the frenetic cadence of city life, the sway of old prejudices, the petty grievances that depleted even the most hardened of souls.

The anger of our fellow citizens was an expression of a deeper longing for quiet and escape from ceaseless striving. In rare moments of stillness, we yearned for retreat, rest, solitude, a taste of repose amid the endless hunger and hurry of the city. When all energy was sapped, even courtesy felt like an excess we couldn't afford. Hunched shoulders and eyes averted were not off-putting, but signs of exhaustion and the slow fraying of the seams holding us together.



Their anger was the unvarnished howl of the weary soul, buckling under unbearable burdens. The heat seemed to liquefy conviction and strip resolve until only raw nerves and aching bones were left. Reprieve was scarce in the restless world, where rest was deemed an indulgence we couldn't afford. In the relentless race to outpace diminution, we pushed through the emptiness, disregarding our needs in favor of duties, expectations, appearances.



Our fractious spirits were unvoiced pleas, expressions of lack gone unheard for want of stillness to hear them. All any soul required was a chance to mend what the hours had torn apart. Yet in the din and bustle of the restless city, even a moment's peace seemed too extravagant a request. And so the slow wearing away continued, and the want of rest became a want of charity for those as spent as us, when all that was truly needed was time to restore what had been missing all along: ourselves.