The Weather Outside is Frightful (but it always has been)

Sitting outside with a cup of coffee this evening, I noted a single winged termite--a laron--flutter down from the heaven. This was noted also by a sharp-eyed, fleet-footed lizard, which immediately skittered up the wall to swallow this first morsel among the many to come. As always, as an introduction to these buggy flurries, the air had grown heavy, tense, portentous--the tropical version, perhaps, of the unstable chill that precedes a snow flurry. Another bug, and another fluttered down, and another and another lizard appeared on the ceiling and wall. Soon the air was swirling with termites, sifting down silently as snowflakes (although you would not want to catch these on your tongue). A light breeze picks up, drifting the bugs and their gossamer brown wings into crooks and corners, closely pursued by cicak. Somewhere off to the west, I think, a man in a mosque is wailing the Muslim call to prayer. Were this downfall from the heaven snow, one would soon hear children singing out. But children don't run out to play when termites fall. This heat, this heaviness stifles such songs. It covers the mouth with a thick, humid palm, such that one feels he can barely breathe. I saw on a newscast today that the journalist Khashoggi's final words were that he could not breathe. How essential such simple blessings become, such that we in dire straits should give them expression, all of life reduced to a function, a need. Christ, near death, spoke of being thirsty. Neither could have believed that their tormentors would care or assist them, and yet so they spoke nonetheless. It is the crucial thing, the last necessary thing, the last factual thing. I cannot breathe. I thirst. And the curtain that falls is not of driven snow but is dingy and dim and permeates from skin to soul. The wailing has ceased, the prayer is done, as is the feast and the flurry of laron. The thing is done, they are said to have reported to their leaders by phone. It is finished. Silence now as fist over fist the heaven withdraws the brutal heat. Into thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit.