August 23, 2002

  • I refuse to use an umbrella (Spanish, paraguas--"for rain" vs. parasol--"for sun") when it rains.  It makes me feel claustrophobic and tends to create a hindrance to clear visibility.  Moreover, although it deflects the rain, it seems to make the defensive bearer more vulnerable to other dangers such as lightning strikes, bumping into people and things, and displaying a larger profile as a potential target.  Yep, I'm always mindful of my *target profile*.  Guess that's why I like to stay alert in public, move inpulsively, and traverse the cityscape like it's an obstacle course.  The *target profile* thing is probably why the military uses ponchos instead of umbrellas, along with the fact that an umbrella preoccupies a hand.  Can you picture a combat unit engaged in battle in the trenches all displaying umbrellas (even if they were camouflage)?!


    So what's the implication of my headstrong disdain of umbrellas?  When it rains, and I have to be out in it, I get wet.  This morning, on the walk from the parking lot to work (about a quarter mile), I got a real good drenching beneath an effusively amorphous cloudburst .  Even the underwear went unspared.  But, hey, when I used to live in the jungle (Panama, late mid-80s), I'd get just as soaked every day by noon from my own sweat.  So what's the difference, I ask?  Today, I just made-believed I was skinny-dipping in clothes--mwuahaha--it was fun.  And now I'm soaked! (brrr...freezing in this office air conditioning)...


    an ominous black and flashing storm
    assaults the downtown noonday blocks
    torrentially turtling all traffic in intersections
    and punctuating violent, anomalous pause
    in the usual sidewalk
    babble of bodies.
    only a few impulsive umbrellad bravadoes now
    willing to suffer
    the victimizing wet.
    otherwise
    people impatiently waiting
    their sanctuaries in angry fret.
    here, beneath a department store canopy,
    a woman curses the weatherman.
    there, stranded in a phone booth,
    a man stamps puppet feet.
    all along the avenues
    hoots and howls of abject damnation
    for nature and its tempers.
    i, an omniscient observer, think now
    of ancient fish fluent in the depths of abyssal seas,
    while below in sewers
    rats drown in the abundant drink.

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