3/04/2012

Falling on my Head Like a New Emotion


Los Angeles is calling. It has been for a long time, maybe half my adult life. At times, a myriad of seductive purposes have kept me here: comfort, familiarity, finance, love. I've known better the whole time but I stayed for so many reasons that don't bear parsing, if only to spare my ego. The lamentations of friends, the admonition of confidants, the necessity of my profession's glass ceiling push me moreso westward each day.

One thing I'll miss, though, miss so, so much, when that fast approaching day comes, the rain. Right now, here in Atlanta, it's pissing down, a torrent of Biblical reckoning. The sky is open, the heavens are flashing, the tears of the assembled gods spill hostilely the brows of those brave enough to traverse.

I love it. I love it, need it, so much. I walk in the rain, always heedless, fearless, unbothered for the protection offered by the brim of my hat; I always have. All my best memories are of the rain: my childhood in perpetually precipitating England, the night of my first standing ovation, that great birthday rafting trip with the river so swollen, the first time I realized I was in love.

When you do the math, Atlanta rains one day for five. Los Angeles, for all its other glories, personal, professional and psychological, rains less than one day in twenty.

What am I to do? Killyin, First & Above, Collegecrush, Nolan-of-Arty-Hands, anyone else with an opinion, what am I to do?

I do so hear love and lust and purpose in the thunder. How do I do without?

2 comments:

Jennifer said...

What's in LA except smog and a lot of competition?

killyin said...

I say enjoy the rain when it comes. While not nearly as frequent as atlanta, a rainstorm in Los Angeles is often dramatic. Streets and cement basins overflow and then when it's all over, any smog will have cleared and you'll be treated to vistas of the mountains you forget about for most the rest of the year. And when there's no rain, you can always raise a glass to its absence. I'll help.