the middle days of james herschel Forum

[invisiblecity]

It always rained on Sundays in New York City. That's what I believe. I'm sure if I took the time to look it up probably Tuesdays or god-awful Fridays might actually be more rain-centric. But who cares about bullshit like that, to me I swear it always rained on Sundays in New York City. Our third roomate Chad, most commonly addressed as the Hanger, swore by a similar faith, albeit with a Southern flair. He said that it would always start raining on him as he drove through Birmingham. He said it had something to do with the hills and elevation and Jet Stream, but I'm sure he was just trying to piss enough logic out there so that his Southern Gentleman musings would seem more holy than my same endearments.

But here I was on another Sunday wasted chasing from awning to awning, escaping the rain, because secretly I loved the fact that I felt like more of a man not allowing the elements to rule my life, and openly because I hated carrying umbrellas. This was a cause for concern on the way into work, coming home, it avoided any similar confrontations because the only drawback was maybe an evil eye from Neil as he sat working at the table, or my own comeuppance in the form of a mildew smell lingering in my room, if I forgot to do laundry soon after the deluge wore off.

Today I noticed again how the rain fit the city like nothing else did, except maybe a mantle of snow and a clear sky. The rain had the benefit of washing away the noise and the tormoil into something more manageable here in the small section of the city we liked to call our own, and how the greys all swirled into something so terribly tragic and beautiful that Picasso would have turned realist to try to capture its inherent abstract force of the divine.

And all I had to show for it was an acute longing for a camera and a trained eye, and a sunday paper that was bleeding current events and 21-across down my arm. It was 5 in the evening, and nothing but a bottle of wine and an empty bed awaited me, so I stepped inside the wine shop, threw away the paper, and made it two bottles, and shuffled the final two blocks home.

Key number one, turn to the right,
Step forward into space three feet by three feet.
Key number two, turn to the left, and push the handle, spin around, pull out key.
Grab door to keep it from slamming vigorously against the frame, recover breath.
Twenty four steps to the third floor, first door on the left.
Key three fits both locks and both turn to the right.
Unimaginative but to our untrained brains, simplistically brilliant.

I opened the bottle of some red that the slightly plump winegirl had pushed on me, and took the mediocre australian import bottle and placed it in it's correct place from where I had smuggled its brother from Neil's collection last week in a fit of weakness.

My mother died yesterday. The plane leaves in 14 hours. I'm not sure what I feel, or what to feel, but it sure isn't hysterical screaming and crying, and it's not satisfaction, so I'm fairly certain that at least I fall somewhere in the normal human reaction spectrum, but I don't have anyone to help me with this, and I'm not certain that I would take it even if I did. So I took my glass, and remembered her, and the same things always came to mind, but I did not think of my life with her gone, it was too soon for that I guess, I don't know, it just never came to my mind to go that way, and I won't let it, because she was all the family I had, and even a continent away she was always right down the street it seemed. I drowned a few more memories in the heavy pallor of the red, and smothered it in the smoke that hung languidly between the fresh damp air of the street outside the open window and the smooth cool circulating breath of our two bedroom apartment. That gentlemen will do anything to keep from feeling all that except love is apparent in the acts we'll do to escape confrontation with our own emptiness. Love was however one of the things which I lacked in the day by day routine of these days, and I had a plane to catch in 10 hours. The pillow never felt so soft, and never was it so hard to close my eyes to the dark.