It's Still Life

A Stream of Consciousness about Familiar

I’m sitting on a cold bench beneath an umbrella and a tree half-stripped by the autumn wind off Pevensey Bay, while the world runs silver at the edges — it’s like listening to a familiar voice; I was born where it rains, though people born to it rarely bother to give the place a name, they simply say, “where it rains all the time,” …there used to be lots of anglers and fish thick as grass, fishermen always seemed to thrive on wet, loved standing on a slick-as-a-trick river bank; but where I come from, everything is wet, everything’s dripping, the mud muddier than mud has a right to be, and the clouds lower themselves over street, building, fence, sky, picnics, Christmas (— particularly Christmas) until everything seems mixed from the same dull tin of grey paint. After a while though, rain stops being weather, it becomes familiar, a presence you cease to notice when it arrives, and notice only when it does not.