Dream of ice in this horrible heat

Try this as an anti-delirium act of meditation: focus on the image and texture of ice, that crystalline creature inside the freezer, in this April inferno. Contemplate cubes of frozen water as if they were diamonds in a Tiffany's shopfront. What is ice, really, but the universe's sly joke: water that stiffens into geometry, only to melt back into puddles the moment you need it most? If you can take it a notch or two up, fantasise about glaciers - those aloof, slow-moving continents of chill - while your shirt clings to you like a debt-collector. We, humans, may have invented air-conditioning, but we're still reduced to worshipping popsicles as if they were holy relics. Picture a solemn procession of devotees carrying ice trays, chanting hymns to refrigeration while footpaths and roads shimmer like hot soup.

Cold things acquire a grandeur in this heat. A frosty beer becomes a philosopher's stone, a bag of frozen peas a crown jewel. Even the humble ice cube tray, with its regimented little squares, feels like a row of IRGC soldiers pushing back the aggressor: heat. The hotter it gets, the more we must dream of cold - and the more elusive it becomes. Ice isn't just frozen water - it's hope, condensed. In this April blaze, it is the one thing we crave most that's destined to vanish the moment we take it out for real. So, dreaming of it is best.