I am the hot, I am the cold (part 2)

Every summer, the hot water is turned off for ten days. It happens in different regions of the city on different weeks, not all at once. The official explanation is to repair and maintain the centralized water heating facilities. This makes enough sense, until you begin to poke at the logic. First, if you pass any of these facilities or notice any of the giant water pipes that snake across the city, bending in crazy turns over driveways you will not see a single repair being done. Next, why not turn off all of the facilities at once, and fix everything at one go? Last, a conspiracy theory circles once again, suggesting that this has to do with easy math. Instead of dividing a yearly water bill into 52 weeks, it is far easier to divide it by fifty and lose two of them.

None of this is important, because the hot water is going to be turned off no matter what the reason. People accept it here, like everything else. It may be the responsibility of the outsider to complain for them, to grumble about the awkward mechanisms that roll out in July or August, the boiling pots of water, the plastic bucket in the bathtub, the frantic scrubbing and soaping in murky water, the dousing with cups on ears and elbows, and the eventual clumsy wave of everything left at the bottom over your head with the hope of walking out clean. It is humiliating, if you let it get to you. Something as simple as turning a faucet becomes a luxury you cannot afford. It is something you simply do not deserve.

 None of it makes any sense, and each year it grows more tedious.

Outside in the street, I pass a tree with a necktie dangling from one of its branches. How it got there, who left it and why - it is impossible to know. This is a place that makes less sense the longer you live here. Maybe every city is like this, and we are all marching towards lives of doubt and confusion.