How I feel when I say I am searching for inspiration

June 18th, 2016

I want it to rain.

Slowly, at first. A soft mist surprising me when I emerge from the BART. The kind nudges you awake. Makes you take off your headphones and forms fuzzy halos around the street lamps. The streets are quieter, only punctuated by that particular sound of a car driving on a wet road. Later, as I close my laptop and check my phone one last time, I can hear the rain, steadier now and tapping against my window. I feel my mind absently counting the pitter and patters, as I pull my warmed blankets up to my chin. I love my winter blankets, so extravagantly thick and soft. In San Francisco, I use them almost the entire year, minus those two weeks in September when summer finally spills over, and I lose whole weekend afternoons to fretful, muggy naps.

And when I wake up, it’s raining hard. Not just inconvenient, petulant rain. It’s big sloppy blobs, no, gushes of water. The kind of rain where your socks instantly soak when you step outside. Car windshield wipers helplessly and comically slosh water around your windshield. And somewhere in the city, someone remembers with a jolt they left their car windows open a crack.

I want it to rain like that. And I want to go outside and just…give up. Not even try to stay dry. Just let myself soak all the way through, feel the rain pelt me through sodden clothes. Watch people trying to sprint from cover to cover. Pass by store owners clucking from their doors. Completely drenched. I say it, slowly rolling its r, contentedly punctuating the last d. Coming to an intersection, I look across an empty street. I stop to listen. There is only the sound of rain.