lui is in heaven

37 degrees in Manila. For almost a week, it felt like getting stuck inside a hot oven. The water in your body dries up and your organs seem to fail you. You are extremely exhausted even if all you do is brush the dog's fur. You feel like the earth is melting and you're melting with it. To cool down, I keep filling up a tub with water and start splashing the whole of Heaven with buckets of water! I watered down the plants, the dogs, the lizards, the birds, the walls and floors of Heaven, my face, my legs, and stayed panting with my dogs in front of the fan. Forget the water crisis. There is a bigger dehydrated crisis in Heaven and the emergency button is up.

On my desk are piles of pending work, drafts and drafts of project proposals, films and concepts to review, images to sort out, and they kept piling with the heat. How in the world am I going to buckle down to serious work when my brains are frying in the heat?

But there is a light at the end of the day. A slight breeze waltz to caress your damp forehead. The birds sing around your damp trees cooled by your constant watering. The flowers are blooming. The dogs nuzzle lazily in your soft belly. Their warm bodies finding comfort, feeling safe and looking beautiful and healthy beside you. I look up in the sky and a voice thunders "vioia" and I smiled. It sounded like music. And I knew right then that everything is alright in my sweltering space. I closed my eyes and kissed the sweat pouring in torrents down my flushed face . . .