Rainy Day

Hello, rainy day,
you make asphalt smell so weird.
Is that a mushroom?

also

Pitter on my panes,
at least useful for one thing:
sentra, white again.

I typically enjoy the occasional rain, especially when I'm back at home. It's been a good four years since I've been around for the changing of the seasons here in Cupertino... there isn't really a concept of seasons in San Diego. So everytime I see the streets littered with fallen leaves, frost on the grass and a gloomy rainy day I get flash-kicked with a sense of nostalgia.

One of my most vivid childhood memories is of walking home from Regnart in the rain. It was one of those days where you could look up and see the rain coming down more horizontally than vertically, leading to overflowing drains and street gutters. My black nikes were soaked to the brim and made that disgusting wet rubber squeak with every step I took, and I'm pretty sure I was bright enough to forget my umbrella and wear my green shorts that day. I had the most unpleasant feeling in the world of wet socks to deal with since recess... and despite all of that I distinctly remember enjoying it. Maybe not Shawshank Redemption-esque, when Andy bursts out of the shit pipes, but it was just a hallmark of simpler times. Carefree.

Over the summer, Jon and I talked about this general topic a number of times. We would be sitting in the library studying and right outside the window would always be kids running around doing cartwheels. It usually went something like this:
"Dude, they are so carefree and they don't even know it."
"Yeah, I'm so jealous..."
"Let's go steal their scooters, we'll flank them."

It's just hard to determine at exactly what point I started taking life so seriously. Lucky for me, I've never been a stresser anyway. On the same token, sometimes I wonder what it would be like to go live in the midwest, eschew all conventional responsibility and farm grain for a living.

I think the underlying tone is somewhere in this story, one of my favorites.

The investment banker was at the pier of a small coastal village when a small boat with a fisher docked.

Inside the small boat were several large fish. The banker complimented the fisher on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them.

The fisher replied, “Only a little while.” The banker asked, “Why didn’t you stay out longer and catch more fish?” The fisher said, “With this I have more than enough to support my family’s needs.” The banker then asked, “But what do you do with the rest of your time?” The fisher said, “I sleep late, play with my children, nap with my wife, and stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my friends. I have a full life.”

The banker scoffed, “I have a degree in business and could help you. You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds buy a bigger boat. With the proceeds from the bigger boat you could buy several more boats and hire people to do the fishing for you. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor; eventually you could own your own cannery. You would control the product, processing, and distribution. You could leave this small coastal fishing village and move to a big city to run an ever-expanding enterprise.”

The fisher asked, “But, how long would all this take?” The banker replied, “Fifteen to twenty years.” “But what then?” asked the fisher. The banker laughed and said, “That’s the best part. When the time was right you would sell your company stock to the public and become very rich, you would make millions.”

“Millions?… Then what?”

The banker said, “Then you would retire! Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, nap with your wife, and stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your friends. Think what a full life you would have!”

Oh yeah, and I hope it rains tomorrow night so my parents don't have to deal with trick or treaters. That, or they should put out an empty bowl with a sign that says "Take one only! Happy Halloween!"