A while back I shared a piece with you from a collection of stories I have been writing. It was about visiting a local restaurant to write a letter to my Grandmother and people responded really positively to it, which meant a lot to me. Since all this craziness has gone down in my world and seems to be taking me for quite the ride, I find much comfort in writing these little scenes based on my life. It's like collecting small fragments and memories, past and present and trying to recreate them in a way that makes sense, though they are very dreamy, and I have the worst grammar ever. Many of the stories reference the weather and the weather has been pretty shit lately, which isn't all that difficult for me (twenty years in Seattle will do that), but it has sneaked into my writing in some cool and interesting ways. The discussion of umbrella usage has surfaced and unintentionally possibly become a metaphor for something. I honestly have no idea how it all comes out....it just does. I thought I would share. Cause I like to do that. And we all been feeling the rain, umbrella or no.
Here's two grey weather pieces with mentions of umbrella's from "This Thing I'm Working On":
14.
These grey mornings, a little misty. Damp, perpetually damp, but never pouring. They remind her of home, which is at times comforting and at times just annoying. She left that blanket of dark clouds and constant drip behind her.....though it is warm and smells of her family. Sweaters and fireplaces, Evergreens and Mountains. Longing for things and people is not the same as missing them. She has never missed anything she’s left or that’s left her, but she pulls at the memories of places and people past, they surface often, requesting recognition, and she nods, after which she pushes them back down. takes only what she needs to keep her going, to make something of use to her, but always for them. little tributes, then tucks the rest away, where she cant see them. for now. Carrying so much around, all these people, thoughts, memories, ideals, places, wonders. Sometimes, she has to keep it all inside and sometimes it has to be down deep. Her parents phone her and she just doesn’t answer. They know they’re there, she brings them wherever she goes. She just needs to sit some out. She still has yet to find an umbrella that actually works, she never even had one back home come to think of it.
22.
This weather is so depressing. Everybody seemed to be saying that. She didn’t notice that though. It seemed like a good time to be outside. Just at this moment. She was walking to the bar. She wasn’t working, she just thought she would go stop by and say hi. To be outside in the grey air that was misting and cooling, dampening the world all over. She took an umbrella this time, but kept moving it away from above her head. it felt like it was blocking out the world and she wanted to see it all. feel it all on her. The mist and the mugginess made her hair curl and rise. she kept it down too, she didn’t care how crazy it looked. Moved the umbrella away. Closes it this time though, wrapping the velcro latch tightly around it. There was no sun to be seen, but the light of the sky was almost too bright for her eyes. The birds sounded out through the rain, echoed calls from some distant jungle it seemed. through the rain it sounds that way. She felt open, she felt so open to all these elements, she let them penetrate and dance around her. Walking on the concrete blocks, she took it all in. there was no protection from this air, this mist, this damp, the dark, the bright. she didn’t want any. Protection that is. Takes it all in. These moments are so freeing.
Share Time! xo
Image: Martin Lewis, Rainy Day in Queens (1931)
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