Did You See Jupiter?

Fruitful exercise for gorgeous twilight Sunday afternoons/evenings in Prospect Park: try to imagine what a startled stickbug might think while stuck to a kite flown high over a pickup soccer game played by émigrés from island nations where spectacular hair and real-deal soccer socks are rites of custom. Adjectives abound! Adverbs accumulate! A stickbug in such a situation would have lots to say about the bounties of Brooklyn, would it not?

The rain sounds distant and miffed, bored with itself, resigned to its fate as rain but just barely. Tired, spent, uninvested. In the earliest, surliest stage of mourning the sense of propriety that once stood in for a sense of self. Amoral rain, agnostic rain. It lacks direction and purpose. It might identify as nihilistic if the idea of identifying as anything struck it as even the least bit worthwhile. The rain just doesn’t care. It’s going through the motions. It puzzles over the difference between detachment and indifference, laughs down those who might think that difference significant. It’s rain ready to plead the 5th Amendment, with attitude. Sarcastic-clapping rain. Did you hear the one about a rabbi and the rain walk into a bar? Bartender says, “What can I get you?”; rain says, “Fuck off. Leave me alone.” Cold, harsh, clinical rain. Sociopathic. The kind of rain you imagine falling on the Soviet Bloc in the ’70s. Rain that drew pictures of skulls and fire on its folders in high school. That’s what the rain is like here now.