I know summer is coming when I crave September. This year, the immoderate desire for autumn imposes itself on me even more with this dreadful heat.From San Juan until this very weekend, the country has reached oven-like temperatures and even the Molt Honorable has dressed up as a meteorologist to warn us of the dangers of staying outdoors.
For those of us who are winter animals, this heatwave not only toasts our skin; it also plunges our neurons into a Sunday-like state of perpetual siesta and bad temper. Let's get used to it; apparently, and despite the warnings of climatologists, the West has celebrated the stampede of climate change with the brilliant idea of burning coal in torrents again and polluting (even more) the atmosphere with the excuse of keeping the Russian theocrat at bay. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the philosopher Sloterdijk warned us that the danger of our times would consist of the image of a sky on fire: little did we think the prophecy would be so literal.
For many centuries, men and women have built our home sheltered from the gales and uncontrollable snow. On the contrary, we are preparing to burst into a future of extreme temperatures, without mild seasons, in which we will live cloistered at home fleeing the heat. Hell is no longer a glacier; it is, as the screenwriters of
Stranger Things,the perpetual fire of a permanently volcanic planet. Things are not in a joking mood; for a decade now, wine companies have been buying land in Pallars Jussà or Andorra to find crops that can survive the heatwave. In short, it is neither literature nor science fiction, humans will abandon the vital-commercial bonanza that the sea has provided them for centuries to move to the mountains. The notion of a climate refugee may seem like a rarity typical of indigenous people forced to pack their bags to flee islands swallowed by the sea, but it already affects some 250 million people on the planet.
In short, it is neither literature nor science fiction, humans will abandon the vital-commercial bonanza that the sea has provided them for centuries to move to the mountains
One of the most evident effects of the pandemic has been to provoke a certain allergy to exteriority: this has more or less anecdotal indications, such as the reduction of our leisure activity and a clear decrease in the number of times we go out to dinner, but the notion acquires an almost terrifying melody if we add to it this perennial sensation of heat. To the dread of contagion and the distrust of otherness as a source of viruses, will soon be added existential strangeness towards the globe of air that invisibly cushions us. Unlike the cold, which after all is a form of civilization (we Mediterraneans know this, we who have excused our ancestral laziness and genetic inability to write novels and operas as heavy as those of Northern European artists), heat has a disturbingly aggressive, persistently fatiguing presence. Walk through Barcelona and you will see fellow citizens very interested in sharing their look of helplessness in the face of the tornado of heat they carry in their bones.
I know summer is coming when I crave September, but the dream of much more autumn also turns out to be vain: the arrival of the new school year will bring equally summery temperatures and the leaves of our ramblas will not fall until grandmothers screw cannelloni again when we are about to sing Christmas carols. A new world made of extremes hits us, we live surrounded by machines and permanent light screens that do not cease and, despite our racially Mediterranean vocation, many of us have exchanged the dream of a cove for a vacation in Iceland. From ice you can escape with layers of animal or synthetic skin; from this discomfort there is no
quisquethat he flees. Look at the sun; he becomes the god of fear again. Put water in your mouth or on your skin; it will evaporate before you taste it. Let's worry, readers of
The Stab; I will seek the shade, as always, to continue writing the weekly Saturday column... fleeing from the fire.