If you happen to be one of those citified souls this Maundy Thursday morning who abhors airport queues or traffic-choked expressways, console yourself that while many intrepid souls seek pleasure or happiness elsewhere, everyone has summer.
I actually swiped “everyone has summer” from a beloved 100-year-old Finnish expression: “Some have happiness, everyone has summer.”
It’s a proverbial phrase that sums up why the Finns are the happiest people on Earth, according to the recent World Happiness Index. We rank 53rd on the Index.
According to a Finnish psychologist, the phrase means that no matter how good or bad a situation is, “you can always count on one thing: sooner or later, summer will come to us all.”
And, summer has come for us all, so officially, says the weather bureau.
Specifically, it came last Friday, 22 March, when The Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA) crisply announced that “the warm and dry season has begun.”
PAGASA doesn’t officially call the season “summer.” Accurately, the country has only two seasons: rainy and dry. The dry season is split further into either cool dry or warm dry.
We’re now in the warm, dry season, with the exit of the northeast monsoon or “amihan,” which has been prevalent since October. This monsoon blessed us with cool, dry days and blanket nights.
“The retreat of the high-pressure area over Siberia indicates an apparent weakening of amihan. Furthermore, the strengthening of the North Pacific High has led to a gradual shift in the wind pattern from northeasterly to easterly and an increase in the air temperature over most parts of the country. These signify the end of the northeast monsoon… and the beginning of the warm and dry season,” PAGASA said last week.
The embrace of the warm, dry season lasts until May, and then the heavy rains and storms come.
Days will grow longer, and the clouds will get thinner, and suddenly, there will be high summer’s azure cloudless skies and poignant evenings with clearly visible stars.
Heat undoubtedly rises steadily, the saturated heat measured by PAGASA’s daily “heat index” figures.
Warmth now lives intimately in our skins and we’re sorely tempted to take off our clothes, to wear only the barest minimum of clothing even with fans going at full blast.
Yet, the high heat isn’t bad enough to deprive us of our sudden impulses to feel the sensory richness of summer, especially in our fast-moving, often hermitic, screen-dominated world.
And when our senses are receptive to the pleasures of the early summer season, we’re more likely to seek direct sensory experiences.
To start, you might need to bite into a juicy slice of watermelon to taste the brightness of summer. Red or yellow watermelons are naturally at their succulent best in these early summer days.
So are langkas (jackfruit), melons, sineguelas (Spanish plums), duhats (Java plum), and the ever-spectacular mangoes.
Or, to refresh screen-tired eyes, you could go out for an early morning walk in search of the prettiest flowering shrubby vine of the tropics: the bougainvillea, with its vibrant, lush heart-shaped blooms of oranges, pinks, purples, reds, whites and yellows.
Or, for something novel, perhaps the bright pink blooms of the “balayong” trees at the Bonifacio Global City might do the trick.
A Palawan native, “balayong” is as close as personally savoring Tokyo’s famed “sakura” blooms. Hurry though. In a month’s time, as the heat becomes unbearable, the pink blooms turn pale white.
Or, perhaps you can skedaddle off as a whimsical “flaneur,” idling off an early orangey summer evening at the handsome newly built esplanade at the back of the fire-ruined Post Office building near Plaza Lawton in Manila, enjoying thoughts that the once bucolic Pasig River is finally getting its vibe back.
But whatever you do in the city, know that this summer, as in the memories of all your other summers, whispers that today, tonight, and in the days ahead, you are happy and always young.
