Dreary

A gray and dreary day: the rain becomes visible and disappears again, but the dripping from the twigs goes on regardless: every end and nub is lit with a dull silvery spark, that winks, falls, and reappears. Somewhere out east, there, beyond the clouds, is the sun, I suppose, or even this light would fail. But it's difficult to believe. In the parking lot of Fred Meyer an unprepossessing young man was shouting at his girlfriend: “it's just fucking DARK and GRAY and it goes ON and ON and ON!” Like she could do something about it.

It doesn't go on and on, of course: in fact we had quite a nice sunny warm-ish day just a couple days ago, which got his hopes up. That's probably the problem.

The uncanny blue of spruce needles, the pale green of the spreading lichen on the steep bit of sidewalk over yonder, and the vague greeny-black of the doug firs standing against the east: all muted, all fading. I'm finishing my second breakfast, unless it's my early lunch: hamburger, sweet potato, romaine salad, all of them plain but for a bit of salt, all of them startlingly vivid and rewarding on this dull, dull day. I am perhaps too fond of ordinary food ever to become a foodie. I like this stuff: I don't feel any inclination to jazz it up.

But I remain moody and belligerent, like that young man: I want to pick a quarrel and have it out with someone. My disappointment is close to the bone, and cold, cold: surely it must be somebody else's fault?

I close my eyes and question my body. The faint silver wavering shring of my tinnitus: the hunch of my shoulders, an uneasiness in my knees. Take a couple breaths, drop the shoulders, move my feet out from under my chair. The anxiety that's left is in my back, in the neighborhood of the kidneys. I arch my back, toss my head, grimace. Sometimes you move just warn off the buzzards. Keep your distance, buckos! This one's still warm and liable to kick.