Epistle. To: Bernadette Wild Garden

Went to the movies yesterday afternoon. Got lost for a couple hours in take away fictions and big sound systems. And walked there in a rainstorm which seems the course for the earth locally the past few days. We've become a citizenry of umbrella wearers. Water piled up at street intersections. The storm drains in the city - a facet of civil engineering if not politics - were not exactly in the best shape.  For the most part they were placed at higher grades than the streets themselves. And it doesn't take a genius to see the problem here. The rain once it collected downhill from the university heights behaved like rivers in floods will do and sought their own gravity. As such with no adequate drainage pattern the rain storm heaved in directions back around corners where it came from and sloshed over curbs where if you were a pedestrian with a short legged dog the dog would be swimming on its leash. Design is a good thing when it works. But was this actually thought out? It was like standing in awe- watching the water hit the rim of the storm drains and then go around every which way but down like crazy. And it was a good sized crowd for a matinee and suddenly in the dim light finding a seat in that movie going mingling while feeling alone I had this slap in the head. Almost like I was trying to impress myself. Lazy and sanguine and walking in the rain. Inflated intentions even. But the hiss you hear are simply your thoughts evaporating into the air. If this were a bar scene and whomever was pouring the drinks and then having to listen the bartender character might say yea, whatever, now drink up and go home. We look for thrills. We look for love. Instead the dull drift of life runs amok around the storm drains! And settled into the movie house. Ah the quiet between the ears implicit while the eyes were stranded in images. And really that's not too much to expect is it? But like the song says - if it's not asking too much - that whole mental clearinghouse never got off the ground. Trouble was sitting in the seats in front of me. A couple of over the hill nimrods. It was like they were harpooning better days now that their salad days were about over and as such wanted everyone else to know. And at a freaky volume. Were they trying to blow out the neon exit signs?  Checking their phones and then yelling gossip from one seat to the next that was personal enough to not amount to shit among strangers. Checking their watches and then arguing data. Presence it seemed was their paramour. Chain swallowing a box of twizzlers and a tub of popcorn while worried out loud over the calories in a diet soda? Yelling out wrong answers to the trivia quiz before the feature. And then yelling oh damn it I should've gotten that one!  Like that might have changed anything. And I do know. They were just having fun. But even so. Remember as a kid doing stunts in the playground and yelling to whatever disinterested adult who had surveying duty at the time look at me! If there were questions of silence - like in a movie house - they filled it with enormity. And if I could read minds - which I can't - I might want a box of twizzlers. Even so it went - through the feature - chomp - phone buzz - loud satisfaction - oh look there's a train crash!