3:16 pm
Tears of a Cloud
I remember when the pitter-patter of rain on the window was a beautiful soundscape to a relaxing time indoors. These days the pitter-patter has been replaced by a death-metal crescendo as mother nature tries to wash away the awful effects of humankind. It’s reported that climate change, as a result of human progression, has altered the severity of the weather. Harsher rainfall, devastating drought and the threat of distinction for some of nature’s wonderful species. As you get older there soon comes a time when nothing really surprises you anymore. Except for the weather. I guess that’s why everyone talks about it all the time, stating the obvious because it’s not afraid to change its mood whenever it feels like it.
Muddy Waters
This sort of heavy rainfall quickly finds its way to creating little rivers and dams through the garden. Flooding the flower beds and engineering gullies of mud and slush, uprooting delicate plants and exposing somewhat surprised worms. The boy dreads playing football in this weather, cold afternoons running through thick patches of foul-smelling mud chasing a ball that he would most likely never get to touch. Afterwards, he’d use a pen to scrape the squashed bodies of worms embedded in drying mud from his boots, checking to see if any were still alive, and throw them onto the garden to seek out a new life in suburban terrain.
Puddles of Hope
After the worms have been liberated, his skin cleansed in a hot shower and the cuts, scratches, and blisters have been Mercurochromed, he enjoys a few hours plopped into the bean bag. Gently falling in and out of snooze-land as the muscles retract and recover from exertion and exposure to the elements during the past few hours of ‘fun’. All in the name of recreation. I try to put in 20 minutes of recreation or exercise each day. It’s difficult when I’m trying to write, as the body is in constant conflict with the mind, one wants to get up and shake it all about whereas the other is having a breakdown and refuses to consent to such frivolity. I wish the aliens would get a move on, maybe they’re held up by a deluge of rain.