Tennessee fall

This day is the sort where I wish I were back at Southern, in the early autumn when the rains have begun but the leaves aren't quite changed and falling. The sort of day when it's been raining already, all through the night, waking you up to thunder prowling around the hills and the promise of more rain, and yet more, falling slow until the sky seeps into the ground and fills the creeks and puddles to reflect back to itself. The kind of grey sky that keeps to itself but never relents, simply changing shades as the days moves onward. I wish it were the sort of day for jeans and boots and hoods, hot drinks and warm blankets, quiet slow sleepy conversations, and movies and books and cooking and the sound of rain coming through the open windows.

I wish it were that sort of day, because it is only on those days that I find being lonely to be bearable. When the day feels darker and cooler, than the need for comfort is appreciated--reflection is elicited--quiet is natural under the sound of the rain. Not so, here. Not when every day is relentlessly sunny and the heat drives even the most fervent of outdoor enthusiasts to hover over their AC--loneliness is so much harder when the outside is so damned bright. Where you look out the window and the disconnect is so large it doesn't seem possible to reconcile. Grief doesn't fit into these California days, and I find myself hating the juxtaposition. Just now, I wish for home and rain.