Wednesday, August 29, 2007

We're back, and changing things up

People often ask me where I find the crazy things from the Internet that I post or send on all the time. The answer is simple. I found them on the Internet. One of the great things about the Internet is that it makes it fairly easy to disseminate information to large numbers of people. Chances are that I didn't get something from the source, but from a link posted on a webcomic, message board, or blog that I frequent. So read blogs and join message boards, I guess. Except don't join message boards.

Anyway, I've been thinking for some time of using this blog as a place to share not only the strange and wonderful things that I find from time to time, but also the places and people that I regularly read and enjoy. I'll be talking about why I like them, of course, and maybe also pontificating about why I embrace the Internet despite being technologically semi-literate.

I'll do that shortly, but today, I want to talk about rain.

People often claim to love rainy days, because they are contrary or moody or poets or whatever, and because sunny days are for jerks, but let's face it, we all privately like sunny days, even in Houston, where the sunlight adheres to your skin and the heat clings like caustic oil, because sunny days are pretty and sparkling and the people look brighter and more pleasant and less harried. Sunny days are better than rainy days, because you can go places and do things with people. Rainy days are for brooding introspection. Some people stand on top of things in the rain and scream dramatically, but I prefer to do my top-of-the-bus screaming when pollutants aren't soaking into my face, stinging my eyes.

Today, however, was a perfect rainy day. It started storming shortly after I got inside for work, and continued for several hours, pouring and cracking and booming, which I could enjoy from inside, where thunder storms are meant to be enjoyed from. When I left work, it was just sort of a light rain, non-vision obscuring, heavier than a drizzle, maybe, but sparse and easily navigable as if it were only raining because, in Houston, it never stops raining, if it can help it. When I was walking through the parking lot and there were no other people, except for one Muslim girl with an umbrella in the distance, and everything was quiet except for the rain on the cars and on the pavement and the very distant, wet sound of traffic I almost wanted to stop walking and just stand there, foolishly, maybe lifting my face a little and letting the smog-laden drops land on my face like an idiot in an inspirational film. Instead I kept walking, turning my head this way and that like I was looking for something. I imagined a man stepping out from behind a car, and I would stop, and we would watch each other, caught in that moment of dramatic rainfall, not the kind of heavy downpour that heroes and villains fight in, but the subtle, quiet precipitation that necessitates no dialogue and no last minute revelations. The man stepping out from the rain is the revelation. Him seeing me, that's the revelation. And if we fight, it will last seconds, and one of us will fall down and be still and it will take half an hour for him to soak through and for the blood to wash away. But we might not fight. Maybe he's a warning or maybe he's just going to shoot me, and the loudness of that shot would be so much more out of place than the siren I heard in the distance as I walked to my car, looking this way and that, but the shot would be just as poetic, through the contrast, the loudness of the shot and the quiet of my body on the pavement. It was that kind of rain. A rain with possibilities. No man appeared, however. I just drove home.

Now there is a blog. I haven't settled on a schedule for updating this thing. Tomorrow may be too soon, but next week will probably be too late. Sometime before this weekend, perhaps, we will discuss something from the Internet.

1 Comments:

At 11:58 PM, Blogger elizabeth said...

I sincerely dislike the stupid sun.

 

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