Weather report

The clock said 12:52 when I glanced up at it from the plate of greens I was picking on. A peek out the window yielded a sight of bluish/purplish clouds and a grey-tinted sky.

Non-movement. Muteness.

The beads of sweat forming on my arms, for some reason, ended whatever suspicions of rain/non-rain I had had this morning when I went outside and felt the sting of the sun against my skin. It looks like rain, I remembered thinking, as I looked up and saw the sky ablaze with sunlight.

Meanwhile, and more so because of the inclement state of the sky, I felt that sensation of being suspended nowhere and everywhere. The possibility of renewal lay somewhere, but I insisted on abeyance.

Quagmires lie where there is flux, and we've all been through enough storms to want another mishap, another fall.

But here comes a drizzle, and I find myself begrudgingly wishing the winds of a week ago back, the memory of a just-risen, benevolent sun--eavesdropping on a conversation about moonbeams and pathways and dreams--ambling into my mind like a cool, confiding breeze.

In-star-gam

The glare. Of the sun.

via Instagram

Today, I tried to make the most of daylight. I read one hundred eighty two pages of Byatt's Elementals outdoors. I prefer reading by sunlight. Artificial lighting distracts me. I find reading lamps too glaring. They take away most of the pleasure of drinking in the words off a page.
Mental note to purchase a low stool. I had to make do with a make-shift one, a tin shoe box whose cover sunk where my weight rested.

None of those sapphires, today.

Give me a pretty, unpretentious scarf, instead, with nachos and lots of cheese on the side. Give me The Postal Service, please, no Maria Callas, not today. And maybe a good two hours of lingering on the sidewalk, ice cream in hand, to soothe the heat in my mouth, a pair of aqua blue, no-nonsense flip flops to cool the frazzled nerves down, and sunbeams to even out the coolness, because too cool can eventually turn into a cold, and the frozen center is what I mean to thaw, today, yes, today. Let me read my book in peace, the one where happy endings come true, but not before the heroine decides she will live her life, first. Then you can pull my hair back in a pony, or pigtails, and bring in lots of wind to make the loose tendrils dance, and I will sashay to the song in my head, in my head, the songs in my head that I will listen to, finally, after long stretches of pretending, of pretensions, of teetering along heights and trying my damnedest not to appear like I am teetering, no stiff trousers and turtlenecks, give me my short shorts and tank top, make the shorts gray, the top pink, thank you, no make-up, no excel formulas, no worries. No. Today, I will laugh and sing and dance, and to hell with what they all may think, let them have double dutch ice cream.

Or, strawberry.

You, sunlight.

     the rain
is brightening now.
-Elizabeth Bishop, "Rain Towards Morning"-


The wind takes something with it when it passes by: dust, moments, pain. The rain could bring flood in its wake, but washes away, too, heat and heartaches. 

The heart emerges refreshed, whole again, after a storm. From a newly-opened window, the mind sees the sunlight streaming in.