A Feast of Deliverance
Everyone talks about the weather in Houston, and with good reason. Since I was born in Africa and have lived in Latin America for many years most people assume I am used to severe climates. However, that is not the case. Nowhere have I lived where the climate is quite as brutal as it is in Houston. The heat is legendary, and rightly so. It is Red Sea heat, without the beneficence of soothing breezes and languid lifestyles. The humidity makes one despair, and the rainfall, which doesn’t seem to be a staple conversation piece, tries my imagination, in order to determine just how much water a cloud can hold.
On a hot summer afternoon, preferably the Fourth of July, go downtown, close to the bayou, and look up at the city. In the searing heat and burning shadows your vision will by confounded. Pools of vapor and translucent reflections will present optical illusions that make the mirage you now behold believable.
Every September, at the onset of the first cold front, there should begin a cult of the Feast of Deliverance. Citywide celebrations should demarcate the occasion. At last relief is in sight. Last year, the celebrations would have begun on the fourteenth of September, the year before, on the fifteenth. I know because I wrote these dates down. Then, in March, perhaps just before the official equinox, anothr carnival could mark the end of the season and the beginning of yet another long hard summer.
Wolde Ayele, from his book Mirage, published by the University of Houston in 1986.
Yesterday was the beginning. Houston, I am the commandant of love, and I am ordering you to dance!
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