storm clouds, snails, and soulmates
03/12/2006 07:46 p.m.
the weather in southern california has been everything short of what you'd expect it to be, especially if you're from the east coast and have never been here and have all these fanciful illusions of what the weather is supposed to be like on this side of the country.

i live in the san fernando valley, surrounded by mountains. and on weekends like this all of those mountains are halo-ed by thick, dark, ominous clouds and the weather is just as moody as most of the people who are crazy enough to call los angeles home.

case in point: driving down to hollywood today, the clouds opened up above me and it hailed. yes, hailed. according to the weather.com encyclopedia, hail is precipitation in the form of a chunk of ice that can fall from a cumulonimbus cloud. usually associated with multicell, supercell and cold front induced squall line thunderstorms, most hail falls from the central region of a cloud in a severe storm.

and it hails in california. who knew?

the weather here, especially during what they consider winter, is manic, bipolar, pensive, abrupt, and mysterious. it's almost as if the weather on the east coast had a one-night stand with the weather in the midwest and they spawned an oddity... with mood swings.

and the rain. oh, the rain. when it downpours here, trees fall. they fall from the abundant saturation. i've seen trees fall in massachusetts but usually it's from wind and or lightning, not rain. in massachusetts trees drink rain.

what sucks most is coming home on a rainy day or night to realize that the closest parking space available is a good hike from your apartment. that sucks cause you know you'll get wet and you'll have to dodge puddles, rivers of water that run alongside the curb, and of course the falling trees. it's somewhat like an old, bizarre arcade game. pitfall.

and you're running through the rain across wet pavement without incident until you hear that small crunch beneath your sneaker. you think potato chip, but it can't be. you think crusty leaf, but it can't be. you think crunchy taco supreme, but of course it's not that. you think shell, hard shell, snail shell, and that's when you look down and see the legion of snails that have ascended upon the rain-washed pavement. you think where in the hell do they all come from? you think please don't leave a mess on the bottom of my shoe.

if you're five years old and you have this experience you run into the house and you run to your dependable caretaker and you ask away with questions about snails and shells and rain and where they all come from, and if snails go to shell dealerships, and you ask and ask and ask until you get the answer that you want.

when you're twenty five this option does not exist.

the greatest explanation that you and your friends can conjure is that rain-wet pavement is the snail world equivalent to slip-n-slide. and that snails live in trees. and that snails would have a much longer life span if their shells were neon orange. if you're a snail, why be camouflaged?

regardless of shell color, i'll always be left wondering why snails move so slow and yet as soon as there is any sign of moisture they appear in clusters like stars do when the sun goes down.

things that make you go... hmmm.

remember that song? it's one of those songs that remind you of something, like i will forever remember my uncle tom when i hear it. weird how music has that power, how it is essential in every facet of our lives. i wonder if the height of music's importance in human life was effected at all by the motion picture soundtrack. if so, i wonder what life were like before music, before soundtracks, before pop culture, before life was merely a matter of references to something else.

and i wonder who was the first person to conjure the idea of the soulmate. it's a complex theory really, that two people can somehow be meant for each other on a level so indescribable, so undefined, that the connection can only be coat-hangered onto the very part of our existence that is equally mysterious; the soul. you have the soul, and the soulmate. there's a catchy slogan in there somewhere. it's kind of on the same idea as; ipod. meet bose.

i could glorify the soulmate idea to no end. i'll refrain. the conditioning is that no one can actually describe in certain measures what constitutes soulmate-ability, it's just something that you know if you find it. if you feel it. for me it came from a person who altered my life long before they stepped foot into it. it's a numbers game. literally and figuratively. just like clouds and snails and stars and signs. each defined with labels and science and explanation and references to other things that have already been defined and labeled and explained.

what if we really could ask the same question over and over until we got the answer we wanted? what if we really could ask the same question over and over until we got the answer we wanted? what if we really could ask the same question over and over until we got the answer we wanted? you get the idea. sometimes it's better to feel life out, to set aside any expectations, to make up your own answers, to live life as if it were merely a build up for the encore.

the author breaks to sip his diet coke. light it up.

in the immortal words of alanis morissette; we all needed something to cling to, so we did. and that's life. it is what it is.

with fidelity & infatuation. _frankie.
[es deus in nobis.]
I am currently Bored
I am listening to U.S.E. & Sparks