Displaced Floridian

Everybody's talking at me.
I don't hear a word they're saying,
Only the echoes of my mind.
People stopping staring,
I can't see their faces,
Only the shadows of their eyes.

I'm going where the sun keeps shining
Thru' the pouring rain,
Going where the weather suits my clothes,
Backing off of the North East wind,
Sailing on summer breeze
And skipping over the ocean like a stone ...

I really do have the intention to write more regularly than my apparent pace. It's not like I don't have the time to sit down and hammer something out; I seem to suffer from a lack of imagination. For those very few friends of mine who might read this and have always been in the "You should write a book!" chorus -- I never have for the very same reason. Not a damn clue what to write about. And don't say all the crazy stuff I did in college, because police are involved and I would like to be in my family's will. Anyhoo, the road to hell, right?

Rewinding back to the point I intended (ahem) to make -- until my creative well springs forth a new life, I'm relying on other writing to at least get me started. Today is brought to you by Harry Nilsson's "Everybody's Talking At Me," found on the Forrest Gump soundtrack, and the letter S, for salt bagel, which I just ate. DON'T JUDGE.

Today the weather is just flat-out shitty. Not overcast, not rainy, not that radio euphemism "fall-like." Just shitty, which translates into a bleak combination of the previous three plus floating pockets of depression and high pressure system of go-jump-into-traffic. Really makes me love the Mid-Atlantic. Like I love getting my pinky toe caught on the corner of my coffee table, or the smell of my own burnt hair when it gets caught in the coil of my hair drier. Gems of life, I tell you.

There are days when I'd sit here and listlessly stare at the rain on the window contemplating my own mortality all Sylvia Plath style, but for some reason this song always puts me in a better mood. You really ought to listen to it to get where I'm going from this point on. (Or go buy what I'm selling, pick up what I'm laying down, or -- Kate W. -- go smell what I'm stepping in.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-_R-FDZ438 I mean, it's actually a fairly melancholy song. Do two sads equal a happy when music from the '70s is involved? Interesting theory. Must discuss later. But in any event, This Song = Happy KT.

Without going deep into it, because Lord knows I don't want my blog to be KT's ruminations on human existence and what is the soul, I think this song just strikes a heart chord of mine relating back to the old homestead. When you have lived and loved a place all your life, a little piece of it lodges itself so deeply into your being that, in a way, you never left.

This winter will be the first I have ever spent outside of Florida. (Yes, I have seen snow. No, I did not eat the yellow snow. I am a terrible skier, but I rock the ass-sliding down the side of a mountain because I am too wussy to ski a black diamond. DON'T JUDGE.) It's going to be pretty miserable I imagine. Today I needed three hands: one to hold the umbrella, one to hold the bottom part of my coat closed, and one to keep the umbrella from flipping inside-out. Hell, it's not even Thanksgiving and my knuckles already look like a lumberjack's and I tried wearing flip-flops again to work today; my toes de-thawed at approximately 10:45 am. Did you know rain makes wool really heavy and smelly? Huh.

I guess what this song reminds me of is that even when my bones are cold, I remember what it's like to be warm. People stop and stare, maybe at the silly Florida girl, but I wonder if they've ever smelled the rain on orange blossoms.