Waiting For The Flood

Sometimes I’m disappointed with how the job keeps me from posting as regularly as I would like. I realize that I’m not being paid to write blog content. I also realize that I could do some at home, but honestly I’m reticent to jump on the computer after spending a lot of my work day doing the same.

Had me a good weekend where not a lot went on. Had some drinkies, had some nap time, baked a little bread… I watched my favorite weatherman, eyes shining with a methamphetamine intensity, tell me about the ensuing storm I would be facing come wake up time. While he did mention the chance for rain later in the day, he saved his satanic energies for the catastrophic winds that would be coming our way – winds that would rip the roofs off of buildings, send cars careening to their dooms, sail small farm animals so far and fast as to beak the space time continuum. I was excited, I like me a good blustery day. But there was rain Walter, there was rain.

It’s possible that I have been made wetter on my travels through the city, but I don’t remember it. It’s like that same sort of phenomenon where memories of high school are painted a sweet and nostalgic sepia tone, my mind remembering those happy days of innocence, when I logically know that I would rather hack off my right foot, by removing and sharpening the left one, and then eating it.

So yes, wet, fantastically wet, but I really didn’t mind it. I was remembering the days when Captian MIA and myself would head out to the beach when we knew a good storm was coming. We’d sit on the beach, smoking and talking nonsense, reeling in the excitement that came with those heavy black clouds rolling in over the Pacific. Hopefully, we could withstand the cold and wind long enough for the deluge that is Southern California rain to pelt our upturned faces and we would return to the car and our ramshackle apartment feeling as though we were witness to something still impressive.

I also remembered one evening as I child where my neighbor and I set up lawn chairs in the middle of the street during a fairly spectacular lightning storm. There’s something about sitting in the street in patio furniture that seems so excitingly rebellious, the same sort of thrill I’m sure that surrealists got out of their activities. Add to that this odd feeling of peace that comes to me with being absolutely enveloped in pounding rain; I would assign the tired metaphor of the rain baptizing me anew, but I don’t think that’s it – I think there’s a calm in submitting to nature. Add to that thunder and lightning that, had I experienced it at that time, I would have said rivaled Laser Floyd as show stopper.

A few minutes into this street audience, my mother came shrieking out of the house calling me all sorts of ignorant and telling me to come inside. I thought about what I would do if a few years down the road I saw my son doing the same; camped out on the Avenue, soaked to the bone and wide eyes to the sky. I would probably smile a knowing smile.

Then I’d run out and tell him get the hell in the house. I would tell him that not only is sitting in the middle of street, when cars can barely see as it is, less than bright, but lightning likes little better than aluminum patio furniture.