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when the rain comes
July 07, 2005
i'm here at halcyon, carefully transcribing what i wrote a few nights ago. moderate lone star consumption. it's a tool, for now.
i've taken to leaving the lights off in my office all daylong, now, not trying to impress or reinforce gloom, but because the flourescent lights seem like just another lie, one of the ones i can defeat with the flip of a switch. no one else seems to mind, and there's been plenty of light available through the windows in this forty days of rainless, brutal heat.
god said he wouldn't flood the earth like that again. he made no such covenenats about droughts and heat.
this afternoon, though, the skies grayed. it didn't seem possible, after so long, for the skies to darken and release again.
plans for the evening fell through, so beer and pool with leora at lavaca street after work. i played brilliantly, seeing shots instinctively and putting them in. and leora would get her turns, and finish the table to win, and i was just as happy with that.
she had to work at the coffeehouse, and i have this newly, perhaps foolishly-bought (but relatively, surprisingly, inexpensive) notebook computer, so i set up at the bar, and began the setup of my computer.
i remember years ago going, with mary and a couple of our other friends, to see douglas adams, one of my favorite authors of all time, speak on campus. he authored the altogether amazing five books of the hitchiker's guide trilogy (yes, i know, but that's the joke), as well as a few other books. so much of anything good about my writing style i learned, absorbed, didn't steal, from him.
i remember him talking about the most time-consuming and agonizing part of his writing method and process being the research, purchase, installation, troubleshooting, purchase of new hardware that was more capable to run, reinstallation, retroubleshooting, and eventual cursing and resignation to the semi-functionality of, new word processing software.
i miss douglas adams, who passed away too soon, but i am thankful that for once, everything on my new computer and software worked on the first go.
so, i sat, transcribing. shannon called, existing happily under the misapprehension that today was wednesday, proposing an evening of karaoke. a correction on the date, and we decided to put it off to saturday.
i looked outside, and it was even darker. i needed headphones to immerse myself properly to write, and i walked outside to find drops appearing on the concrete, on the windshields of cars. leora came out the side door, leaned on the rail, and we smiled at the smell of impending rain, took joy in the sight of distant thunder, as if something primal in us appreciated the return of the rains, the end of a toil and struggle just to find game, to grow crops.
i ran across the street, moved my car to the garage. by the time i got upstairs to the corner, the rain was coming down, and again, it was like something new, and for a flash, i felt like early man seeing it all for the first time, feeling the cooling fall from the sky. i ran across the street, a gust of wind blowing me sideways briefly, the back of my shirt immediately soaked through.
and here i sit, drenched in the here and now. i close the notebook, and just spill out this here, this now.
Posted by Rob at July 7, 2005 08:06 PM