2010, first post: There will come soft rains
I.
It´s a night of the week, pick a night, really, during the past week and I´m sitting crosslegged over the desk in my living room without anything on but the nylon shorts I wear for running on the streets during the evenings. The lights are off and I´m still soaking wet from the storm raging outside. It´s been raining like that for what seems to be a century now.
This is supposed to be Zazen meditation, by the way, in order to quell down not only the cramps in my calves but also the burning from this real nasty cut I got, somehow, on my lower back: “You should definitely see a doctor about that one,” I was told, only I never did.
I think I ought to have a mantra for this, I´m guessing, like using one of those koan saying things or whatnots in order to ohm me along the way to painkilling enlightenment. Upon reaching out to the totality of my being, though, all I´m able to do is zero in on some random Wikipedic piece of knowledge I get to pluck from god knows where but since as far as undiagnosed ADD is concerned, beggars trying meditation can´t really be choosers, I opt to go along with the flow:
I´m sitting crosslegged over my desk trying to synch my respiration to the opening line of a Sara Teasdale poem. God knows where I got that one from. It´s supposed to be about nature and how nature endures even after the war how it will outlast man and so on. Whatever, really. There will come soft rains, it says on its very first line. It´s also the poem´s title and my mantra for the evening.
II.
It´s Saturday night and the Teasdale line comes to mind once more, this time in fast staccato bursts as if trying to keep up with the flickering of the strobe hanging above the dance floor, which is painted in a black-and-white checkerboard pattern imitating the linoleum from long-ago 1960s-era kitchen floorings. The walls are exposed bricks made to look cool enough with the whole rough-edged charm thing going: Trendy as you might expect from such a place. Then there´s just a blank piece of the wall just by the DJ´s booth which is not covered by bricks, but a slick black area over which the sketch of a girl´s face, three maybe four feet tall, has been painted in white in terse, irregular brush strokes as if emulating schoolroom chalk: Each flash of the strobe lights up the drawing like a ghost.
I can´t take my eyes off hers: I´m mesmerized.
Then two girls short of being in their 20s start kissing each other next to me. Then two more. I take one last sip from my vodka and orange juice and wonder just where the hell have we stumbled upon this time around – and whether I have or haven´t grown too old for this:
Thirty years old and doing the l*sbian teen nightclub scene. That will be the day. It is the first and only day of the month with open skies, no rain at all. But, There will come soft rains, says the poem. Who am I to say otherwise?
III.
The week passes, January gives way to February and more rain beckons at the tail-end of each working day like an oily blot or gray shadow uncoiling from its damp recess behind the horizon, then oozing itself across the urban skyline: There will come soft rains.
It´s a night of the week, pick a night, really, during the past week and I´m sitting crosslegged over the desk in my living room without anything on but the nylon shorts I wear for running on the streets during the evenings. The lights are off and I´m still soaking wet from the storm raging outside. It´s been raining like that for what seems to be a century now.
This is supposed to be Zazen meditation, by the way, in order to quell down not only the cramps in my calves but also the burning from this real nasty cut I got, somehow, on my lower back: “You should definitely see a doctor about that one,” I was told, only I never did.
I think I ought to have a mantra for this, I´m guessing, like using one of those koan saying things or whatnots in order to ohm me along the way to painkilling enlightenment. Upon reaching out to the totality of my being, though, all I´m able to do is zero in on some random Wikipedic piece of knowledge I get to pluck from god knows where but since as far as undiagnosed ADD is concerned, beggars trying meditation can´t really be choosers, I opt to go along with the flow:
I´m sitting crosslegged over my desk trying to synch my respiration to the opening line of a Sara Teasdale poem. God knows where I got that one from. It´s supposed to be about nature and how nature endures even after the war how it will outlast man and so on. Whatever, really. There will come soft rains, it says on its very first line. It´s also the poem´s title and my mantra for the evening.
II.
It´s Saturday night and the Teasdale line comes to mind once more, this time in fast staccato bursts as if trying to keep up with the flickering of the strobe hanging above the dance floor, which is painted in a black-and-white checkerboard pattern imitating the linoleum from long-ago 1960s-era kitchen floorings. The walls are exposed bricks made to look cool enough with the whole rough-edged charm thing going: Trendy as you might expect from such a place. Then there´s just a blank piece of the wall just by the DJ´s booth which is not covered by bricks, but a slick black area over which the sketch of a girl´s face, three maybe four feet tall, has been painted in white in terse, irregular brush strokes as if emulating schoolroom chalk: Each flash of the strobe lights up the drawing like a ghost.
I can´t take my eyes off hers: I´m mesmerized.
Then two girls short of being in their 20s start kissing each other next to me. Then two more. I take one last sip from my vodka and orange juice and wonder just where the hell have we stumbled upon this time around – and whether I have or haven´t grown too old for this:
Thirty years old and doing the l*sbian teen nightclub scene. That will be the day. It is the first and only day of the month with open skies, no rain at all. But, There will come soft rains, says the poem. Who am I to say otherwise?
III.
The week passes, January gives way to February and more rain beckons at the tail-end of each working day like an oily blot or gray shadow uncoiling from its damp recess behind the horizon, then oozing itself across the urban skyline: There will come soft rains.
posted by 186282mps at 5:39 PM
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