It's raining in southern California.

Normally, rain is not a big deal. In fact I would guess that for about 85% of the US, rain is reasonably inconsequential...you just have to drive a little more carefully. Unfortunately for this area, we never get any rain, and so it always devastates us. The ground is so dry the water won't soak in, thus creating flash floods, closed roads and streets, backed up sewers, and so forth. The roads and parking lots have been busy soaking in all the motor oil drip-drip-dripping away throughout the year and it floats to the water's surface creating slicks, spin-outs and fishtails. The pavement that is patched during the rest of the year suddenly finds its carefully placed patches floating away, the cracks reopening and giant potholes gaping in the freeways. Has been an adventure. Combine this with tornado warnings and we have a party. The rain has been welcome, and yet depressing. There is no green smell in a place as paved as this.

Have been busily packing and moving my things into storage, preparing for my move into single apartment...feels strange, and have come to most difficult and tiring part as I start to sort (yet again??) all the memorabilia from high school, college, early jobs, various places I've lived. I'm not too bad a pack rat anymore, but it seems like this stuff reproduces in the dark of the closet. And of course much of it goes off like little psychic bombs; there's a reason it's packed in a box and taped shut. Letters from my dead grandmother; love letters to and from this person, that person; one merry summer where my college friends and I apparently needed to write each other every week in some whimsical way; damaged photos...damaged psyche. There's an entire stack of letters to my friend I was desperately in love with (cooled to platonic some long years ago) and who's married now and just had his first child. I don't even want to read them. Is it better to just shred them and let lost memories remain in that state? Don't know. But difficult to find them. Confusing. I have too much on my mind without adding all this detritus.

I hope that after the move is completed, and my time is sorted, colorful and filled with love and life once more, I will feel clean and these thoughts and memories will once again drift softly down the river until they are out of sight.