Loafing

It’s strange, when I don’t look at it or think about it, the rain goes away. 

It’s raining hard outside, but in here it’s cloudless.  Maybe it’s the music, this is music for a sunny day, not a rainy day and that’s probably why it’s sunny in here and not out there. 

No.

When I turn off the music I can still feel the rays coming down.  I think it’s just in my head then.

I grew up in this dome of gray water falling down all the time, sure I’ve gone on vacations to sunny places, but the rain still feels like my natural habitat.  Like some kind of frog sitting smiling half submerged in one of a thousand puddles.  

I’ve never seen a river in the south.  One of the slow, dirty rivers that meander down through the fields in the Deep South.  And yet that’s still what I see when I close my eyes.  Up here in my mind, I’m just floating down a wide, calm river that I’ve never seen.  Maybe someday I’ll go visit one of those rivers down there, there’s no way it could disappoint me.  Like a favorite celebrity that turns out to be an asshole or Paris turning out to be stinky and decrepit.  I don’t expect it to be magical, just slow and pleasant. 

Being raised next to this cold, fast, skinny river in the rain made me relax.  I see people that let the rain and the cold and the river and the depression get to them and I wish I could give them what I have.  I see people that take drugs to feel like I do, and I understand. 

Other people want to go away, get away from the rain and their unfulfilled lives, I know and they know that it’s too late.  Wherever they go, whatever paradise they find, it will still be raining in their heads.  Gray will blot the sun for them and fog will strangle the palm trees.  They were raised in this place and will probably never leave it. 

So I think it doesn’t matter where I go.  I’ll just keep loafing down this river in my mind and the harder and longer it rains the wider and deeper my river will flow. 

I’m not antisocial.  I love people, people are the best.  I wish they could come and join me here.  Where words aren’t necessary and drugs aren’t necessary and the sun is finally shining.  I wish they would come and join me here.  They say that I am wasting my time. That I need to be a doctor or a lawyer or an engineer.  But it doesn’t matter what I am, I’ll always be that small gray frog, sitting in small gray puddle, smiling because he knows that everyone feels sorry for him and that he feels sorry for them too.