tothesound

It’s raining here. It’s good. Today I talked to a landlady, not my landlady, someone else’s– I’m still managing to not live somewhere– and she said when she moved here in the 70s things had gotten real bad and they were setting up fines for using too much water. Whatever apocalyptic language you want to use for California I’m going to believe. It doesn’t make sense to live here except yesterday when it did because it was warm, and February. 

At the Columbarium two weeks ago someone had left that e.e. cummings poem, the i carry your heart one, and the pang of embarrassment I felt for them is one of the most ridiculous impulses I’ve had for a while. I remember in 10th grade defending e.e. cummings because it was that first discovery of things defamiliarized, and thinking that poem with the warmth and crisp littleness would be the one to share forever. At some point e.e. cummings stops being the clearest representation of the sexiest thing ever, and thank god, thank god for the discovery of other poets and probably more importantly for actual sex which isn’t anything like a lot of uncapitalized things would have you believe. 

In 10th grade too I’d written a report on Mrs. Bridge, the first book I’d read about the devastating banality of suburbia and fear and being trapped and quiet desperation at its finest. We gave oral reports on these term papers, and my teacher asked if I recognized any of my mother in Mrs. Bridge at all and I’d said no, truthfully, but then had to nod yes when he asked if I recognized any of myself in her which is up in the top few moments of really sad things I’ve confessed to people I didn’t know. 

So it’s raining which here means intensely dangerous driving conditions and that whatever resevoir of manufactured worry gets indulged with Astral Weeks on repeat which someday may go the way of e.e. cummings and not be the most heartfelt sincere thing it is now, impossible to imagine at this point but it was the same way in 10th grade.