Tears in the rain

This blog can be a real fucker sometimes. You want to write fresh, first hand. You want to capture the spirit of a place, cut right to its core; swiftly, deftly and with devastating effect. But you can't. You can't write - the words won't flow. They feel vapid or laboured. Or maybe you're busy actually living your days rather than writing about them retrospectively. Or you're drunk, tired, driving, bored or distracted.

Sometimes it's more serious than that. Ideas or themes present themselves to you, but they're not ready. They need time; they need to incubate. They need people, places, landscapes or experiences to bring them to life. So you drag them around with you, waiting for the right time to weave them into the narrative.

There are other things too of course. Right now, I am shuffling ever nearer to the closing of a chapter. In ten days I will be leaving the States, and I don't feel ready. The grains of sand are hurrying themselves before the neck of the timer. A conclusion will need to be written when the experiment is far from over.

Today I felt a little weary. I tried to restore myself with a good meal but it had the opposite effect. When I left the restaurant, it hit me, or rather I hit it. A clear, crisp lightness in the air. It hardly felt like rain; no effort was expended to make it fall. It was barely falling at all in fact, more like the drops of moisture were hanging from the sky, and I merely trespassing amongst them.

They ran down my face none the less, and wet the dry lips that hid a narrow smile.