When life turns rainy, I can’t resist the urge to get in my nest and wait for the sun to come out.
Today.
It.
Has.
Rained.
All.
Day.
Long.
I tried to work; I tried to put fire to metal out in the studio. My eyes kept lifting up from the work of my hands to watch grey clouds spill down the side of the West Bench. The world was perfumed with wet sage, wet dogs, the sexy honey scent of daffodils, saturated dirt and lightning bolts.
Do you think an earthworm can sense the coming rains? Do they begin to make their way out of their tunnels into the air? Do they know to save themselves before their burrows become watery traps? I often wonder. Is anyone out there an annelid specialist?
After a while, I shut the studio down, wandered inside for a cup of hot lemon honey and sat down with a book in the brightest room in the house. I planned to bake lemon squares* but tied shoes on my feet and took Farley out into the rain for a chilly run across town instead.
The mountains are still shrouded in a wet cloak of white as far as I can see and I’m sure the rain is falling as snow in all the high places. The weather makes me sad; the world is crying and I can’t help but be affected by it.
I’m feeling dramatic.
Tonight I might put on a silk nightgown and red lipstick and drag my typewriter up onto my white, metal bed frame. I’ll put the Goldberg Variations on the record player. I’ll sit there and write prissy, narcissistic poems while smoking slender cigarettes until the dawn comes. Then I might fill a bathtub with warm vermouth and sit there reading Sylvia Plath journals until my bath waters evaporate.
Now I’m just getting weird.
But don’t you ever want to live out a black and white movie
when it’s raining outside?
It’s a good thing I don’t live in Seattle, I’d never get anything done.
*about those lemon squares
i plan on sharing the recipe
with you but i’m not sure
what i put in the sweet
little fellows last time i
made the darn things. next
time i bake them i plan on
recording everything i do
to the crust and batter
and then i shall share the
details avec toi.
d’accord?