Dribbler on the Roof
Our city of Ashes has been hosting some grand storms lately...
Each afternoon of late, the trees flip leaves, pale underbellies heralding the downpour...summoning rain to fall this side of the tunnel...
Dark skies roll in, bringing storms that rip and winkle...
and somewhere up there, flying Dutch men play a sombre game of nine-pins...
...modern distractions turned off, sit by the window with candle, book and tea...
We've been relishing the experience, snug in our 1926 apartment, nestled among the tree-tops, a top notch, top floor observation area...
Do you know what squirrels do when it rains?
We do.
I woke up yesterday morning to the sounds of splitsplot water drops on black wool...
on the black wool we just bought at a yard sale...
the black wool, which smells of moth balls (how do you get their tiny legs apart?)...
the same black wool that I had draped over the coffee table just the day before...
I stare at the coffee table, the wet black wool and it's collection of objects...
trying to encompass the meaning of this while wiping the sand of sleep from my eyes...
Gravity's Rainbow (thomas pynchon) is soaked and swollen... a much bigger book now...
the emerald ashtray is a birdbath...
the Camel Turkish Golds are dung mud brown...
my feet are getting damp...
splitsplot
...I'm splattered with micro mist...
...I find the trajectory...straight up...a patch of dark plaster about the size of a bath sponge sagging to meet me... at it's center is a navel big enough to hold a marble...
That afternoon, as the next wave of storms approached, I paid rent and alerted the Land Lords to our leaking roof... they promise to send the "General" over to look at the problem as soon as possible...today I suppose...of course, the rains were harder that afternoon...
By the time we got home, the ceiling in our main room looked like a monochromatic cheetah pelt... dark spots and markings ... new puddles on our hardwood floors...
After talking to Arthur, our large, ruddyfaced maintainence man, and being assured that he could do nothing...that we'd have to wait for the "General" and that nobody would pay for us to stay in a hotel for the night, just in case our roof caved in...I hung up.
There's a small door in the ceiling just outside our doorway...it's basically offlimits... there's no ladder... but I can climb and, having the assurance that Nobody from the maintainence team or management would bother to come round after 5 pm, I put on my monkey suit and climbed up in the dark door...shouldering aside the heavy hatch above, I pulled myself out onto the roof... tar and tin steaming in sunset...
Sure enough there was about a foot of water at the back of the building...simple problem, the gutters were dammed up with fresh fallen, spring death...
I got dirty soot covered and inky...split my finger on some wire....
But I fixed the problem....and it felt good.
Each afternoon of late, the trees flip leaves, pale underbellies heralding the downpour...summoning rain to fall this side of the tunnel...
Dark skies roll in, bringing storms that rip and winkle...
and somewhere up there, flying Dutch men play a sombre game of nine-pins...
...modern distractions turned off, sit by the window with candle, book and tea...
We've been relishing the experience, snug in our 1926 apartment, nestled among the tree-tops, a top notch, top floor observation area...
Do you know what squirrels do when it rains?
We do.
I woke up yesterday morning to the sounds of splitsplot water drops on black wool...
on the black wool we just bought at a yard sale...
the black wool, which smells of moth balls (how do you get their tiny legs apart?)...
the same black wool that I had draped over the coffee table just the day before...
I stare at the coffee table, the wet black wool and it's collection of objects...
trying to encompass the meaning of this while wiping the sand of sleep from my eyes...
Gravity's Rainbow (thomas pynchon) is soaked and swollen... a much bigger book now...
the emerald ashtray is a birdbath...
the Camel Turkish Golds are dung mud brown...
my feet are getting damp...
splitsplot
...I'm splattered with micro mist...
...I find the trajectory...straight up...a patch of dark plaster about the size of a bath sponge sagging to meet me... at it's center is a navel big enough to hold a marble...
That afternoon, as the next wave of storms approached, I paid rent and alerted the Land Lords to our leaking roof... they promise to send the "General" over to look at the problem as soon as possible...today I suppose...of course, the rains were harder that afternoon...
By the time we got home, the ceiling in our main room looked like a monochromatic cheetah pelt... dark spots and markings ... new puddles on our hardwood floors...
After talking to Arthur, our large, ruddyfaced maintainence man, and being assured that he could do nothing...that we'd have to wait for the "General" and that nobody would pay for us to stay in a hotel for the night, just in case our roof caved in...I hung up.
There's a small door in the ceiling just outside our doorway...it's basically offlimits... there's no ladder... but I can climb and, having the assurance that Nobody from the maintainence team or management would bother to come round after 5 pm, I put on my monkey suit and climbed up in the dark door...shouldering aside the heavy hatch above, I pulled myself out onto the roof... tar and tin steaming in sunset...
Sure enough there was about a foot of water at the back of the building...simple problem, the gutters were dammed up with fresh fallen, spring death...
I got dirty soot covered and inky...split my finger on some wire....
But I fixed the problem....and it felt good.