Did you know? #2

That I LOVE rain? I always have. Even it it was shit-storming-rain. A couple days ago on my 7 day weather forecast, it said it was going to rain Tuesday. It was supposed to rain up in the bay area, so I thought I would get doubly lucky, going from LA to the Bay and it would still be raining. As a kid I spent a lot of time playing in the rain. My mom never had a problem with it. It was never, "You're gonna catch your death" kinda thing for her. And I never did, by the way.

Tonight, I dropped my car off at Tim's house so it wouldn't get ticketed or stolen or something. I decided instead of calling for a ride, I would walk to the train station and then home from Union Station. I had enough forsight to take my umbrella with me (as I've been checking the forecast for the hourly "raincast." When I got to the Filmore train station in Pasadena, there was a homeless guy that got off the train before my train came, and I watched him. And he was interesting. Eventually he looked at me and I waved hello to him. I figured I owed him that much after staring at him for a good couple minutes. He was kind of a crazy one. But I think he was probably more scared of me that I was of him (which wasn't much, except for a moment). I would have loved to let my train go and pick his brain but I would have been stranded as it was the last train of the night, I believe. When I got to Union Station everything was quiet. There were people there kind of waiting about, or sleeping in the nice leather seats. Its a beautiful place that everyone should see even if they aren't traveling.

I could have driven all night in the rain. I even considered driving up to the bay in my car that I don't trust to get me there, just so I could drive in the rain. LA doesn't have much rain. I grew up in the Bay Area where there are seasons and generally a good amount of rain in each except the summer. Eventually, I decided against driving up, as I remembered the picture of California's weather for the next couple hours and knew there wasn't going to be rain past a certain point.

For me, rain was always cleansing me. It wiped down the surface of the earth and restarted many natural cycles. It renewed the smell to things or washed away the months of oily cars zooming down its surfaces. On my trip home in the open rain (under my umbrella, of course!) I smelled many different things I normally don't smell. I smelled my Hawaii trip from New Years of 2007. I smelled watermelon, which is a strange one to smell in the middle of downtown LA, in the middle of the night, and in the middle of the rain. I smelled piss on a homeless guy I walked by. I smelled wet asphalt. And while wet asphalt isn't that pleasant of a smell, it's the nostalgia it evokes. Wet days on the school playground, when days were simple and cold and pretty.

Rain makes me happy, it makes me smile and I feel serene. Nothing in the world can be wrong when I am standing in the rain.