Drizzles

There is nothing quite like a late afternoon drizzle that does not portend rain for (and probably because of) its momentariness. Of course, the very afternoon drizzle may seem nothing for those love rains dearly like my father. Earlier today, having lunched late and leisurely at an Indian place in Yau Ma Tei, and then picked up some papers at office, I decided to return home when I realised it was drizzling. As I descended the escalator onto the thoroughfare that leads to the main road that singular smell, which emerges only when moisture is deeply wedded to soil, told me that a few minutes of rain had eased into this drizzle. The sky was blue, the clouds white and the sun bright - though, alas, there was no rainbow to be seen. Some would call those passing showers; for a romantic like I, there is more in these showers than those accompanied by the festive orchestra of lightning and thunder.

The drizzle also cleared some of the cobwebs that have come to tenant my mind recently. Hopefully, this post inspired by it will also wash away some of the "rust" that, I feel, has come to envelop my writing, deterring me from posting part II of Postcards from Cities among other things. The moisture-checkered lens of the summer air also brought to my mind  memories I have pressed into politeness, silence, denial or all three - and I could not help but smile at the Tom and Jerry pranks they play continually on each other. Has there ever been a more curious pair than the heart and the mind I wonder? The question is mostly rhetorical.

By the time I reached my residence the drizzle had completely cleared up, and post-rain perspiration, often worse than pre-rain heat, had already set up stall: perhaps, a gentle reminder of the trials that lie ahead over the next eight to eighteen months as I enter the daunting, but admittedly exciting, phase of writing an ambitious dissertation. Fear can inhibit, indeed, but as I have had occasion to find out fear can also tweak thoughts in the manner of a goad. That is not a bad thing at all.

***

Outside my windows, evening has set in, and a gentle breeze resonates with the tunes of a week gone by as well as whispering the possibilities of the weekend in store. The arch atop the thirty-floor building appears as always like a beacon, lit in bright gold (on many an evening, it is to this beacon I have turned while trying to trace my way back home after long walks to unknown spots). 

Two weeks of July 2012 have already gone by, and they have been pleasant, punctuated by many of life's little joys. A dear friend's daughter turned three day before yesterday, and as I said to her in a text: "Her every  shall speak your resolve." A friend-and-sister, who I will have known for nine years come this August, celebrated her twenty-fifth on July 10, and I had the good fortune of being able to wish her over phone. I have myself been greeted, the last two evenings, by photographs of my nephew sent to my phone by my sister. Sometimes, it takes a child to tell us that there is no point taking life too seriously. But then again, my parents tell me I never had a childhood. I suppose I now understand why I spend time thinking of happiness. ;)

Good evening.