rainy day

Today:

• Watching a friend with a friend – affectionate, careless touches, teasing and smiling – illuminated. Feeling that I am not a friend at all. (And in a lesser part of my mind, inspired to give love so constantly and carelessly.)
• Lights flicker out; computer stays on; office stays gloomy. The generators roar and rumble in the genebank.
• I go to zumba (dance-based exercise class) but – of course – there are no lights – and no music. Without it, we jerk grotesquely and time crawls.
  Sounds: the stomp of feet and the creak of floorboards, thunder as the storm begins.
• Deep blue sky, drizzling rain, lightning.
• From my window, I watch the car I didn’t see, driving away, full of friends, or people I know. I contemplate another solitary evening.
• I think about what it will be like to leave Mexico. I know it will be difficult, that I’ll leave a part of myself behind again. I will miss people – but I am surprised when I realise how small is the number of people I will really, deeply miss.
• I don’t get round to doing any work, writing emails, catching up with sorting out my photos or writing my diary, or making banana muffins with my old bananas. Again.
• I do listen to an astounding play on the radio. It makes words run; throws them onto the fire to conjure brilliant images; fits them into the keyholes of the human heart.
• Somehow, the wind sounds like cats screaming in a fight.