Raindrop

A raindrop. Ephemeral, liminal, destructive. A single raindrop brought me to an abrupt halt, such that my life veered back on course.

I should explain.

Of late, my existence has been a grey season of disappointment. After dashing myself upon life’s uncaring shores, I was left numb, like a serene sea on an overcast day. Or some such poetic sentiment. I fear I have become lost in maritime imagery.

My defeat was comprehensive. Unrequited, unfriended, unwanted. Or to put it more colloquially: dumped, pariah, jobless. Much is forgiven in the glow of success. Failure drenches one in swamp sludge. The truth, without self-pity, is that the world had turned its back on me.

Attempting both to console myself and vent spleen at my outcast state, I decided to take to the pen. This required the purchase two objects, upon which I lavished great expense. The first was a journal of thick, handmade paper. I was given to understand that the tiny flaws in the leatherwork of the cover were a sign of authenticity rather than shoddy workmanship. The second object was a hand-turned, wooden fountain pen (since I was not satisfied with an ordinary writing implement). The salesperson assured me similarly about its imperfections.

Yes, dear journal, you and yond pen are the talismans of my baroque descent into madness. Ah, but without you, I would not have begun again, jettisoning all that I was before.

God, I’m a pretentious wanker.

I confess my surprise upon discovering that possession of these new items did not instantaneously sprout the urge to begin scribing. Thus, poet-like, be-slippered and be-bath robed, I ventured for a constitutional, pen poised and journal in hand. Like King Lear on the heath, so I wandered along the middle of the winding road, mind ablaze. It was only at the edge of my awareness that a blind bend in the road approached.

And then, the raindrop. Plopping onto my pristine page with extreme insolence, I looked down. Mechanically, my legs perambulated onwards, taking me off the road and onto the pavement. Abruptly, I stopped. I had become diverted from my meandering. At that precise moment, a car careened around the bend. Had my wandering wondering not been interrupted by this tiny natural drop, car and I would have become united in an abstract spray of crimson.

Were I a person of the mystical persuasion, I might be tempted to conceive of my arrival upon the pavement as a sign. There are no signs. That is poppycock.

I returned home in all haste, both to flee the scene of my almost-imminent demise as well as to protect my precious paper. Further water from above had begun, and luckily, my mind was not yet as broken as the mad king.

Upon sitting at my writing desk, these words began to flow.

Yet as I reach the end of my account of the saviour raindrop, I find that I am left only with melancholy. I’m a wanker. No great solution has been found, no direction discerned. Having brushed the reaper’s gentle coat, I do not find myself, as others have, filled with joie de vivre.

No, I remain merely alive and in a severe state of disorientation.

I have it! For now, dear journal, I will allow myself to remain in befuddlement. Seeing that I have no clear or obvious alternate to my previous course, I shall wallow as a wanker in the swamp of the lost for a time.