"You know that feeling when the truss lets go, and all the horrible drops down one side of your pants?"
- The Good Reverend Roger, describing the effects of a fine July day in Tucson.
The sun, while not truly good or evil is, in the Holy Land, a Holy Thing.
In the Time of Great Heat, Tucsonites hide from its burning gaze during the day, fearful of a slow, painful death from melanoma, at night enjoying the cooler (but still hot) air. In the Time of Dry, Cracked Lips we seek the sun's feeble rays before the temperature begins to plummet at sunset.
Like a god, we love, hate, fear, and ignore the sun, hoping against hope that if we don't bother it, it won't bother us. This is not to say that it isn't ruthless and uncaring, because it is. Its victims are random, could be anyone at any time. In this way, too, it is most Stinking High Holy. Only a foreigner would think to try and defend themselves from its holiness.
That's another thing. People from all over the world chase the sun into our parts. Sometimes they do not understand why. Nobody quite does.
It calls to many people to do many things. To Tucsonites, it calls us away from the Holy Land, but we cannot heed its call, for the Call of the City is far stronger, and the dangers of disobeying far more hazardous. How do you think Davidson Canyon, out by I-10, was formed? Various impact craters, correct.
It is important to note that the sun doesn't necessarily notice Tucson. However, that's like saying most people don't necessarily notice the homeless--keep walking, don't stop, if they ask for some spare change give them a glare to send them running.
Or something like that.
:mittens:
Keep going!
Nice! MOAR.
(I was in the middle of a chat when typing, and nearly entered the words "godless ratfucker" instead of speaking them. I need to work on that.)
I cannae find the 'Like' button. Guess this will have to do. :mittens:
Requesting permission to join in.
OH GREAT PROPHETS OF THE WEST. SHARE WITH US YOUR HOLY WORDS!
Wintertime is when Tucson comes alive. People emerge from their shelters sometime in October, smear themselves with SPF100 sunblocker, slather on the chapstick, and get about their business.
It gets a little cold in January, but nothing like the ice ages that grip the lowlanders, in mythical cities far away, where water drops from the sky all year round. Nobody has ever seen these cities other than on television, and most people believe them to be Shangrilah-esque legends and nothing more. We're reasonably certain that the trains that leave one side of Tucson just roll right back in the other side, like the screen-wrap in the old Pac Man games.
So, for 5 months, we work and we gather, we steal and we hustle, in preparation for the summer.
By April 1st, people begin to retreat back into their shelters, to hide out from the punishing, cruel sun. They seal up their shelters, turn on the automatic defenses, and scrawl mystical signs on their doors with blood and semen, to keep the police and the upside down people away.
By the 15th, the last stragglers are in. Anyone still trapped outside is burned to ash before the end of the month, their outlines scorched into the concrete and the coliche, like the shadows burned into the walls of Hiroshima.
And so life goes on, here in the High Desert.
:mittens:
This is great!!!