I feel really, really good.
It's raining. It's been raining for about two weeks straight. I don't mind. I just keep thinking about this Tom Robbins book I read where these two people lived in Seattle and always walked through the rain with their heads up because, well, hell, you're going to get wet anyway -- might as well not let yourself be miserable on top of it.
The other night I went to Tom's apartment. I walked over in the rain; might as well, right? After all, he only lives half a block away from me.
He smoked about half a joint while I was in the room, which may account for the weird feeling I got there... You ever get a déjà vu feeling you can't shake? Like, I'm thinking of rain and then I'm thinking of rivers and flowers and dark lakes and caves... And then I'm thinking of a night I walked three miles because I'd just seen "Lost Highway" for the second time, and I was looking up at this bright orange streetlight, kind of hearing grasshoppers out the corners of my ears, and thinking, "damn, I wanna have sex in the desert!" And then, without a pause, my brain flips back around to sitting on my bed one night talking to David, staring at the "Wizard of Oz" poster on the wall and realizing I had a terrible headache and it felt like he was picking through my thoughts with his eyes everytime he looked at me.
...And all this stuff is buzzing around in my head like music that you can't turn off.
It was the same kind of eerie, make-it-go-away-so-I-can-breathe-normally feeling I used to get around Neil. Neil was psychotic. Diagnosed schizophrenic.
"Whatcha thinking?" Tom asked.
"Nothing..."
"Are you thinking about your old boyfriend?" he nudges.
He's NOT my old BOYFRIEND, I wanted to yell. His name is Peter and he's NOT my old boyfriend... I will NOT have people referring to Peter as my ex. Yes, I was thinking about him, but he's not my ex.
"No, I was just thinking about your apartment."
"You like?"
"It's like... it's like there's been a lot of music here," I said, "And the echoes won't quite die. It's very loud in here."
"I love the way you see the world," he said.
"...Chaotic..." I finished.
"Chaotic," he repeated. "That's my vibe, don't you think?"
"Yes." Yes, something's wrong and I want to go home. I always know something's wrong when I get those weird déjà vu feelings. It's like something's crawling on me, trying to get inside me, and the only way to block it off is to remember things as rapidly as I can. Call it intuition, call it psychosis, but I kept feeling as though part of Tom was trying to chew up my brain.
So I went home. I peeled Tom off me and went home. I walked to the grocery store first, thinking about rain...
It wasn't actually bad hanging out with Tom for the evening. He's weird and I tend to think he's quite unbalanced, but he's still fascinating to listen to. I was glad to go home though.
I thought about rain.
I walked around town yesterday in the rain -- walked downtown from the mall, which is four and a half miles, give or take. I'd seen a sign that said, "Free Food ~ Eating is a right, not a privilege! ~ Come and make new friends, talk about social injustice, or just come and eat ~ Every Tuesday at Grass on the Roof, 6 PM." So I went, just to see what it was. Also, I was hungry. I walked there in the rain.
(You've got to be cool if you can actually say, "hey, meet me at Grass on the Roof," and actually know where that is... It's not a part of town that say, your dad would have ever heard of, although he might walk past it four times a day...)
The Social Injustice People, henceforth known as SIPpies, were serving chopped zucchinis in water. I'm all for vegetarianism and all, although I eat meat like it's going out of style, but zucchinis in water? Isn't that a little... sparse? Besides, there was rainwater dripping into the pan of zucchinis and water... I couldn't tell if the acidic flavor was due to spices in the zucchinis-and-water, or some weird ecological fuck-up.
I helped the SIPpies with the dishes -- I figured I'd help them out, having eaten their zucchinis and all -- and walked home. In the rain.
I took a shower then -- gahd knows why, because I was soaking wet anyway -- and fell asleep with a towel on my head.
...And woke up for a phone call from Tom, which I ended as abruptly as I could. The phone rang again almost immediately; it was Peter, lonely and needing somebody to hang out with.
I cooked a steak, cut it in half, and brought it over to his new apartment on Java Joe's plates, wrapped in plastic wrap and covered with three plastic bags to keep the rain out.
I got lost on the way over there. It started to pour. I was soaking by the time I showed up on Peter's doorstep. Soaking and miserable. He brought me inside, threw me a towel, and giggled that I looked like a half-drowned rodent. Wet leaves and sticks clung to my pants. You could have filled a wading pool if you'd squeezed the water out of my sneakers. But I changed (happy new apartment Peter; don't mind me, I'm just stripping in your kitchen...) and felt much better. I left the rain-clothes to drip in the bathroom.
"Can I crash here?" I asked.
"Yeah. I wouldn't expect you to walk home in that..."
I woke up this morning to birds singing and the sun shining in. Peter sat up and said, "whoa, it's NICE out!" And then he sunk back down into bed and lay in my arms for awhile. I love Peter. He's a wonderful person. I whispered to him, "you have beautiful eyes." They're the color of rain, only brighter.
I walked downtown in the sunlight to get my hair cut. The girl chopped off a LOT of hair. It doesn't look as bad as I thought, originally, but the bangs are just stupid. Oh well.
I left the haircut-place in the pouring rain. While I'd had my glasses off, the rain had started again... I was wearing only a tank top and my last remaining pair of dry jeans, and had to stop under a tarp until the storm blew over a little bit.
Suddenly, I feel quite ill. My head hurts, my stomach is queasy, and my glands are a bit swollen. I think I have a slight fever, too. And hot flashes. I think it's a combination of hormones and a virus. I took an echinacea tablet and some Axids, so I should feel better by morning.
I guess all I really need is to dry out...
For as much as I like rain, I need a little more sunshine.
~Helena*
"Only love can make it rain... Like the sweat of lovers laying in the fields..." --The Who