I miss the rain. I know it rained today, but that wasn't what I wanted - what I miss.
It was heavy for a while out there. I stood inside a street-level, glass-wrapped lobby off Union Square and watched it. Yeah it was heavy and it was hard. For a while, it scared away the oversized, primary-coloured golf umbrellas. You know you're dealing with something above a patter when the rain is too much for even those over-protected folk to withstand. I felt secure, like a hedge-funder with a full bank acccount in a shrinking cash economy. I felt above and safe and beyond the deluge. And not only because I was dry and inside, but because I was dry and inside a cinema. Not any cinema, but one I have used before, last time I'd lived here. One with many screens over two levels and a stairway connecting them that you can climb or descend unsupervised and flow on for free from movie to movie. You can keep that Movie Marathon going from morning to midnight if you know how to read the program right. And I can read that shit better than Bukowski could read a formguide down at the track.
You're gonna need all those several movies. I do at least. For just like noone can hear you scream 'out there', noone can see you cry in here. Its too dark. Too dark for anyone to notice. Too dark for anyone to care. And the stairs are unsupervised too.
I felt welcomed by the familiarity and reliability of the place. A place that was there for me and still is. Even after I left it's many dark rooms, it's somewhat brighter lobby kept on giving to me. It protected me from the rain, whilst still allowing me to watch the deluge fall and I liked that. But that is not what I miss.
I miss rain that you're in - not out of. The rain that falls on your hat or your hand or straight onto you hair. You smell it begin to mix with and amplify you own scent and you know or hope its only you that notices this. Its not cold and you have nowhere to be - or nowhere that requires you to be dry - so you slow down to catch every drop. You fight that urge, ingrained from somewhere in youth, to run for shelter. You feel a bit naughty. You feel a rebelliousness. You feel like you can hear a far off first grade teacher or a forgotten great uncle demanding you come inside and you feel that if you refuse that demand from childhood, there must be other psychological anchors you could shed just as easy. Suddenly you're doing more than taking pleasure from getting wet. Not that that isn't enough, as you hair falls about in that film-noir way it only seems to do in the mirror just out from the shower.
Hair looks better in the rain. I miss that.
It's a solitude ride, this wandering under the rain. I'm concentrating on finding a comfortable center among the increasing wetness and I have no space left to share. To share a word or a care or a concern or a dollar or a helping hand or the truth or love or a couch or acknowledgement. If not any of these things, then why would you want another around? Why would another want you around? So I'm alone. Yet I don't feel alone - or lonely - because I have none for giving and don't expect for receiving. I would not notice even if you were there and actually were responsive. So I'm alone, but not lonely. I miss that too. The rain just falling on me and my scattered, heavy hair and all the while my heart is so full like a purse that I do not notice. I miss not missing.
I did go out in it today. Just before. I was craving something to eat, but knew not what that was. So I walked past my options. It had slowed - the rain - and it felt cold around my shoulders and I wanted to be dry and satisfied.
I once danced in a tropical rainstorm. More than once in fact. Everytime those summer storms rolled over, we'd cross onto the beach and dance. Maybe some singing, but no music. We'd dance close and we'd dance apart. Those raindrops were warm and heavy. Real heavy. They hurt. Not a stinging pain, more so a dull thud. That was rain that really wanted to let you know it was there and falling on you. The storm would blow over and out into the crashing Pacific beyond the shore and we'd return back to the house, sprawl out on the raised, wooden slat porch and let the warm air dry us. I think back then we used to listen Nina Simone or Brownie Mcghee or John Lee Hooker and one of us would put one of those on the CD player. We'd wait to dry, prolonging what had just fallen upon us. We moved at a much slower pace back then and had the time to drag out every last second of life's delivered pleasures. That's something very much worth missing.
It's stopped raining completely now and I've forgotten why it was before. The phone rang and as I stood by the window and spoke I could see the rain stop. Something about far off phone conversations and falling rain is incompatible. They don't mix well. One can't need the other. The rain was in what I spoke.
Where I'm staying now watches out from high on a rise and below, through the trees, I see the cars and the shops and the people going to synagogue for New Year. Directly over flies a jetliner heading East. Rain falling on a plane would feel grand, but they never allow that. The pilot always rises above the clouds. For reasons of comfort and safety I suppose.
Not for mine though.
I miss the comfort and the safety of the rain. Of the rain that has fallen on me and of the rain that will again fall on me.
