we are strangers once more // journal no. 1

I'm sitting in a Starbucks in the hazy middle of daybreak. It's barely light out, despite the clock hitting 8:03 in the morning. The rain is percolating, dripping, falling slowly and softly on the windows flushed green from the gray sky. Outside, trees are blowing, the dark clouds barely warm from sunrise. In just seconds, it goes from a pale gray to charcoal horizons, trees pulling their hands through their hair, turning and rushing and bending low. They're shaking and the rain glints from the headlights on the road, falling insistently, pounding on the outside. It's dark indoors, the outside spreading a smudginess into the flickering light of Starbucks. Cars zip by quickly, skipping the drive through, skipping the place, and slip through the rain.

People come in, wet and tousled from the deluge, laugh, say they're escaping from the storm. Instantly, strangers become friends for minutes, united over terrible weather, worried about the storm that's passing, gathering around each others phones to glance at radars, bemoan over the clouds of blackness coming in. Strangers that for seconds, are more, could be more, than the minute passes and they step outside, run to their cars under the heavy pattering and pounding of the rain thick in the air. I've got a grande vanilla latte with soy milk, and then they are gone. The tables outside echo with the slap, every second more droplets tap out their pattern, the sound dulled by heavy glass windows and the faint hum of electricity. The water outside is soupy, splashing in puddles up to the middle of car tires as they rush through. It's so deep outside that waves are made and they crash on the cement. It's strange, unsettling, to see cars that size swallowed up in water that was just minutes ago suspended in air. Every so often, lightning opens up the dimness of the sky and reminds us that the power could disappear in an instant.

People come and go, regulars filter through those looking for a decent cup of coffee, and people see each other for the first time. These bonds created over a strangers phone, from people trapped inside because of the weather, who only know each other based on their daily cup of coffee, surface. A group of people, finding solace together. It is a rainstorm that brings us together, and yet, the sun persists in coming forward, pulling apart what was being built. And so we go about our days, waiting for these collective glimpses of humanity, reading between the lines and usual orders to see something a bit more, a yearning for relationships above else.

The rain pounds but the sky clears. A bird flies across the murky clouds, an ink stain in the weather, and the cars roll by unknowingly on the freeway, forever apart, forever mysteries. Thunder rumbles, the rain abates, hardens, rolls on surfaces and fills the pooling tables and streets, and yet, we are strangers once more.



jottings and thoughts from a few weeks ago.