Every summer, the Valley restarts its probation period. ‘Can you withstand the heat?,’ - it asks, and then again – ‘Are you sure? How about some more?’ Sometime in September, it relents and sends one of it cooler winds, - not yet cool, just a little cooler. The trial is over, you may now go out in the afternoon, and no one will try to bake you alive.
Despite a plenty of warning,
people keep trying to live here, and every Summer the Valley tries to scorch
them, sometimes adding fire and smoke for variety. And yet, every September it
relents, and rewards the patient with cooler winds.
To be fair, the reward lasts twice
as long as the tribulation. The Valley is not unreasonable. It is just maddeningly
obsessive in its cyclicity. It mocks our naïve understanding of hell and
paradise: “How about both, every year? Four months of hell, eight of paradise?”
Like a crazy parent, it keeps switching from bad days to good days, back to
bad, and back to good again. We all know the game; it is nothing if not
predictable. And yet never fail to feel grateful for the fist cooler winds of September.
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