Not Rain

Two shed roofs face away from each other. The upper one, above the clerestory, breaks back, to form a bit of shelter for the second story windows. Most of us, in the building profession, call this an eyebrow, for obvious reasons. It provides a drip edge that falls on the lower roof. I sleep upstairs, usually, and what wakes me is the patter of condensate. It's not really rain, just saturated air that collects on the metal roofing. Irregular dripping pattern, like an off-beat drummer. Not unpleasant, if you like jazz, a sound Zappa would exploit, or Cage. Unusual tonight because the individual drips are large, no wind and the humidity is very high, it's completely quiet otherwise, so every single drop sustains. Surface tension, dust from the power plants, gravity, all conspire; unique, but not all that different. Ephemeral. Music is where you find it. Just enough to wake you. Nothing better to do, 2 in the morning. I listen to Bach, read for a while, fall into a reverie, stare into that middle distance, remembering mistakes and wishing I could change things. The past is a bucket of ashes. Top of my form, I can't write any better than this, what you understand is probably what I meant. Can you read me with a celery spear poised above a pool of peanut butter, sure, not a problem. You have to do the right thing. I have to go back to bed soon, I'm wearing Linda's hat, does that mean anything? Holiday standards. I love I could curtail anything. Just saying. Attention to detail. Back to bed in my old army surplus mummy bag atop the bed clothes. First night in the bag and I forget where I am; attempting a simple rollover I manage to throw myself out of bed. No damage, what with the only rug in the house and the excellent cushioning of down. Reminds me of that last Thanksgiving at Janitor College, when those of us who either didn't have a home to go to or couldn't afford a plane ticket, threw in what coins we could collect from the deposit on beer bottles. Essentially a stone soup, with those packets of crackers pocketed wherever we'd found them. The soup base was congeries of fiction; there was meat because the school raised rabbit for the table, and what vegetables remained in the greenhouse, Brussels sprouts and kale. It was a More Than Open Admission school that regularly admitted illegals, so there was no shortage of hot peppers. We'd brewed a large batch of Celebration Ale months before, resting in the bottle after a long and slow secondary fermentation. One of the few times we'd ever achieved an alcohol level higher than ten percent. We'd bottled fourteen cases and there were fourteen of us which seemed fortuitous. I don't know how it was where you went to school, but at Janitor College, by Thanksgiving the paths between buildings were tunnels, slot canyons with walls of compacted snow. We had started drinking early as though it might be an anodyne against the loneliness. Someone had brought a magazine with a story about kayakers going over waterfalls, and we thought it would be cool to roll off the snow-banks, into the tunnels, and the first one with a broken bone won. We were well protected, in our many layers of winter wear there was little danger of injury, but Maurice (in the Student Exchange program), on his way over the edge picked up a small icicle from an over-hanging bush, and when he hit bottom it pierced his heart. He bled out, before we knew what was happening. Talk about a damper on the day. School of hard knocks, or whatever. That red ice plagues my memory. I'm perfectly comfortable, having survived: it's a random thing, cow-bells in the distance, hearing that distant cloister ring vespers. What we are is established before we speak. I'm confused about you, but I know who I am, just another beggar on the street, you're something other than that. What the reader perceives, and I have to go back to the books, to see what I thought I meant. Nothing prepares you for life. You either have the guts or you don't. Castrating lambs with your teeth. Be honest.