A Little Bit of Rain

 The light is gray and soft.  Outside, storms rage and pass.  Big hail falls not far away.  The air is slightly cool.  I start the heater to counter the chill, the dampness.  I make a breakfast of sausage and eggs, coffee, milk, and then full, pour a small glass of wine.  I read in the living room to the sound of the rain.  Small things.  The soft yellow lamplight, the ancient cabinets.  I read a chapter at a time, short, sensual chapters.  Breathless.  It is cold and raining in the small towns of France.  I rise and step to the window, look through the dark rooms, light a candle.  More rain, another turn through the house as if searching for something lost.  The phone hums.  A message.  I pause before I read it.  When I do, the meaning of it is somehow lost upon me.  One can never know.  Is it simply confused or is it cryptic?  She might as well write in hieroglyphics. And then more.  The secrets of life want revealing or at least an audience.  I can picture the scene though, or imagine it.  The rain will not cease for a long time today.  Perhaps it will continue through the night.  It is a general rain, as they say, with storms.  The muted light like dusk.  The rugs, the art, the soft leather chairs, the polite shade of the reading lamp.  The messages cease, and then more storm.  

The rain is ceaseless and the cold.  I rise to set the thermostat again.  I search recipes for cocktails on a rainy day.  I have a bar but lack many ingredients needed for most of the recommendations.  I choose the Dark and Stormy.  I eat the last bit of sausage and read another chapter.  

"Solitude.  One knows instinctively it has benefits that must be more deeply satisfying than those of other conditions, but still it is difficult. And besides, how is one to distinguish between conditions which are valuable, which despite their hatefulness give us strength or impel us to great things and other we would be far better free of?  Which are precious and which are not?  Why is it so hated to be happy alone?  Why is it impossible?  Why, whenever I'm idle, sometimes even before, in the midst of doing something, do I slowly but inevitably become subject to the power of their [his friend and his friend's lover's] acts."

The narrator's lust makes me hungry.  I open a can of lentil soup.  It goes well with the Dark and Stormy.  Just then, the rain ceases, the sky lightens.  The day becomes less atmospheric, simply soggy and unappealing.  Excuses for my lovely moodiness evaporate.  

I nap and wake shortly before nightfall.  The rain lets up long enough for me to feed the cat and then returns.  I will read.  I will watch t.v.  Perhaps I will eat.  I prepare an avocado, chop some garlic. 

There are no more messages.  There is only rain.  I am home.