Rain in the Desert
(Blog Soundtrack: Tunng - Woodcat. Open in a new tab/window and listen along)
Phoenix is not a city built for stormy weather.
It rained fairly heavy the other day, and I thought how nice it would be to be able to use my windshield wipers for the first time in months.
I left the office for a bite to eat around quarter-to-noon and ventured o’er flooded sidewalks across from soggy buildings that never bothered to have gutters installed.
In Windsor, people drive thirty kilometers below the limit on the occasion of the first snow of the year. Here, people drive at a snail’s pace every time there’s a weak shower.
I’m feeling much better now, by the way. Eating my vitamins and holding down food just fine. Even the old snowbirds that inhabit the rest of my condo complex have taken notice.
I should mention that I play a little game whenever a stranger tries to strike up a conversation with me (not as often as I’d have expected, truthfully), in that I try to guess whereabouts they’re from. It’s the same game that I play in airports when I’m too early for my flight (certainly not as often as I should be). Everybody here is a transplant, and it’s sometimes as easy as picking up on an accent or hearing them hint at a sports team, but I’ll never work myself up to ask outright.
I think it’s because if someone were to ask me,
“so where are you from?”
and I knew they had no way of ever finding out the truth,
I bet I’d have a lot of trouble saying “Windsor” or “Detroit”.
But, I bet I’d feel the same way if I’d been born in Prague or Paris or Tuscany.
I haven’t the foggiest idea why that is. It’s just one of those nights.