Daydream Believer as Rainy Day Woman #12 & 35

She was thankful for the storm that hit Thanksgiving weekend and the subsequent others of December.  She was not, however, thankful for those she heard complaining about them.  While a small percentage of the county’s residents had legitimate reasons to worry about flash flooding, those she heard bickering alongside her cubicle did not and so they were the real nuisance.  This place needs rain like a kid needs a dream.  In the sunny biodome that San Diego so often is, these rare, elemental belligerences are welcomed.  A genuine season’s greetings had rattled her from her desktop afternoon slumber as the wind-powered rain pelted the office windows.  For a moment she thought she was still dreaming . . .

Wearing her yellow sleeker that had no buttons because she had ripped them off to play pogs with the other kids, they all laughed when she held out her palm, revealing how she intended to play.  Troy, always sheltered in her backpack, never laughed at her.  Troy was her doll, but he didn’t know it yet.  Dolls come of age just as their owners do.

She was twelve, jumping on her neighbor’s trampoline in the rain by her lonesome.  Thinking of reflection in the rainbow that had not yet appeared but soon would, she thought about colors and their seemingly endless possibilities and other things kids think about when they’re jumping on trampolines by themselves in the rain.  She decided she wanted to jump from one trampoline to another and then to another for eternity.  Her trajectories would be like arching rainbows, though hers would not lead to tangible pots of gold.  Instead, the journey itself would be her fortune.

And then she heard what sounded like a violent rattling of a cage.  She no longer found herself jumping on a trampoline.  Instead, she was keeled over a gutter as chocolate-tinted water gushed violently downhill.  She found herself inexplicably grabbing for anything solid that lay near her.  Soggy newspapers bleeding ink stained her fingers as she sought to slow the persistence of physics.  Lava rocks, weeds, fast food wrappers, cigarette butts, long-forgotten tennis balls and numerous other suburban leftovers would soon join the newspapers in her construction of a dam.  She felt like what she was doing was symbolic, but she didn’t quite know of what.  Just when she thought the dam was strong enough to hold, it broke and she was swept downstream.

She lay on her back as she was instructed to do in her YMCA swim class.  Looking above she saw dark clouds mingling with lighter ones as a kind of vortex formed (think Donnie Darko’s space traveling wormhole).  Marshmallow hail, violet gumdrops, and rock candy mingled together to form a secret recipe Willy Wonka would tip his tall hat to.  She whimsically stuck out her tongue to sample this novel flavor of weather.  Surprisingly bittersweet, it bludgeoned her back to her mid-thirties.

The pool of drool on her desk was almost enough to convince her she was still the kid she told herself she was.  Her eyes, slow in adjusting to the artificial light, strained to focus on the computer monitor before her.  She had been dozing for twenty-three minutes, though it had felt more like twenty-three years.  Without noticing, she had begun to write an email.  She soon forwarded it to everyone in her office.

rainy day woman # 12 & 35

sweet the possibilities

pour a familiar rain

each drop alike yet all their own

with their own art

they paint each other’s way