Rain and Radiohead

It's raining outside, not really, but sort of drizzling and I'm using it as an excuse to explain why I didn't go on a run today. I'm back at Silverlake Coffee, today, everyone in here is on a Mac.

Kid A by Radiohead is playing right now and it is the perfect fit with the weather. I like the rain because it makes it okay to be in a pensive mood. When you see someone on a rainy day they aren't trying to make you think everything is daisies and cupcakes. Rain is cleansing. In LA after a rainy day the sky is always really clear and it surprises me how close everything looks. Coming out after the rain is like coming out from a hibernation, you can look at life with a fresh perspective.

It is kind of a hip thing in LA to complain about the weather, when it is only marginally bad compared to anywhere else. It's always better to have more rain and more water because that means more vegetation and less fire. I worry a lot lot lot about global warming. Global warming will cause deserts to expand, so hypothetically LA, being on the edge of a desert like landscape, should become more and more desert like over time. Every time it rains I see this inevitable outcome pushed back a little bit and it makes me happy. I really hope we don't see global warming cause the mass famine they predict within our lifetime. I don't worry about the world. The world will be okay. It is the human race that I worry about. Animals and plant life of some sort will persevere and return once we are all gone, but can humans make it on this Earth? I know that sounds hippieish, but my dad talks about being a kid and seeing rivers where it looked like you could walk across them there were so many fish in them. It makes me not want to have children, the way things seem to be headed. I have good faith in people in general, in the sense that there are a lot more good people than bad people out there, but it seems like the bad people will do whatever they can to continue destroying the world and I think it might be too late to turn it around.

At this point, I think I would much rather adopt. Not to trivialize it, but it is like getting a dog, do you get a purebred or do you go to a shelter? Sure, purebreds look cool, but do you really need to bring more dogs into a world that is already filled with dogs that need help? Also, with all of the physical and mental ailments I have, I feel bad passing down all of this shit to someone else, honestly. I would do it if my wife really wanted to, I guess, that is if I ever get married. That is a long ways off.

The longest relationship I've ever been in was with my last girlfriend, Kate. We broke up in June and she was engaged to be married to another person by September. My friends didn't really like Kate much, well, they did at first, but not over time. Part of that has to do with the fact they were in settings where they'd been drinking usually and her personality didn't fair to well after a couple drinks. She would become demanding and talkative and seemed to be incapable of listening or comprehension. But she also managed to come off pretty terribly a couple times when no drinking had been involved. I don't need to go into detail, but those of you at Massa the night she moved know what I'm talking about.

The most endearing thing about her to me was that she really liked me and she wasn't bashful about it. That can make up for a lot of shit in my book. I never had to wonder if she was into me. It made the fact that we had nothing in common not as bad. She was in fashion, listened to country music, loved Donald Trump (as in, like, a presidential candidate), liked calling me sweetie, had a tiny dog with a pink leash and hated being massaged or touched on her back. All this stuff, other than being in fashion, which is just a world I don't understand, annoyed me. She would get mad when I insisted on listening to Pearl Jam or watching The Daily Show every single night, she didn't really read fiction or follow current events like I do. She liked The Office, that I could get behind.

Still, even though I am really glad not to be with her anymore, I miss the comfort of having someone to be with, I would like that with someone again, but with somebody I connect to more. We connected pretty well on an emotional level, but it could never go to deep because we couldn't really share things with each other, oh and her brother that I met one time was a nut ball. He made me get super drunk with him then got really aggressive with me in my house, like telling me, he didn't like me and I just laughed because it was ridiculous but then he told me to stop laughing, and asked me how I would like to get my ass beat, then he would say he was kidding, it was just really weird and I was hung over for multiple days after that.

I broke up with her right when Kim came back to America from Cambodia. I didn't do it for that reason, but it was opportune timing, we had almost broken up a few times before and the last time, we didn't even get emotional, I just told her I needed to see other people, that I didn't feel like she looked at me like she was attracted to me anymore. She said she was, but I didn't feel it. Kim and I talked more over the next month or so than I did in my entire ten month relationship with Kate, substance wise at least. It was really nice to have that, like I would write something this length and get a response this length in return, it was nice not just directing my thoughts out into the ether.

The first time I saw her was on the Forth of July weekend, we hung out a couple times, but never alone, never like I wanted to. It wasn't until my drive home that I got a message from her telling me she still had feelings for me, that felt really good too. It made me not care that I wasn't in the best place in LA, my job at docstoc was alright and it was cool working with Kevin, but it felt like I was moving off the path I had chosen of working in entertainment and comedy. This made it okay. I honestly thought I could get some experience in a different field, save some money and see where things were in like, half a year from now and have the ability to do what I wanted.

Well, the choice kind of got made for me, I guess. I mean, I made it, but not consciously. My illness made the choice for me. I am going to be here for a long time. I am going to find a job in entertainment. I'm going to keep doing improv with my friends. It is a good choice and probably the healthiest choice I could make, but after projecting this fantasy in my head throughout the last decade, it is sad that it is finally over. There was always a chance in my mind that we'd get a shot at being together and now that chance is gone. It's okay, but that thing that has occupied my mind now occupies it in a different way, gone are the dreams of driving up highway one to Bodega Bay together, gone is the complete fantasy that she would come visit me in LA and love it so much that she would stay (I didn't even really believe this was possible). They are replaced by hmm... I don't know, I'm not really feeling regretful or guilty about it today, just sort of sad, not in an overwhelming way, but sad like the rain, in the way it washes away everything that came before, sad because I know I will forget, my memories draining away more and more, replaced with the wet, cold, dreary, present. (That's not a complaint, like I said, I like the rain.)

Right now Discovery is playing here, Kim introduced me to them through the song Osaka Loop Line. There are a lot of songs that remind me of her, I will probably be avoiding them in the near future, but you should listen to them, because they are all really good:

Wilco - Jesus Etc.
MGMT - Electric Feel
Bon Iver - Skinny Love (already brought this up)
Discovery - Osaka Loop Line
Ray LaMontagne - Trouble
Sufjan Stevens - To be Alone With You

Nice, I thought there would be more, maybe this whole thing will be easier to get over than I thought! For the record, Kate liked Ray LaMontagne too, but whenever she put it on, well, yeah...