Last night Mike Lee, Carrie, and Default Chris came over for games, gossip, banter, and my homemade strawberry daiquiries. Although M, C, and DC are all primarily Malcolm's friends, we have become closer over the months as a result of our thrice-weekly gym excursions. It is rare for Malcolm to drink alcohol, and still rarer for him to invite guests over. The "man-party" was thus a treat for me to watch. Individuals' behaviour varies depending on the company they share. Watching Malcolm interact with his friends, especially under the spell of alcohol (In Vino Veritas), is quite interesting. He's less grim, less serious. He laughs more openly and is constantly grinning.
I went to bed before our guests left, around midnight. Around 1 am, a huge storm broke out. It started to rain, the wind banged on my window, forcing a spray of raindrops into my room and onto my bed sheets. There was thunder. This storm seems to have come from nowhere. It has been sunny and relatively cloudless all day, and indeed, it is sunny and cloudless this morning. I felt as though I had spent the day in the eye of a hurricane, and was being briefly thrust back into the chaos. It is strange how everything can be still, as it has been these last few, humid, sunny days. I had the sensation that moving and breathing and time itself were slowed, all made sluggish by the heat. The storm was all the more surprising because it intruded onto the scene at such an inert time.
........ah.........ah..........argh.
Writing is not going to smoothly today. The wiring in my brain that connects any abstract or complex thoughts is faulty and corroded. It can very difficult, on days such as these, to connect the proper words, and an order to those words, to the things muddled upstairs.
Today, I am going to sit outside on the sundeck, bundled in the pink, Hello Kitty blanket (it is very windy today), and begin reading Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being. I've decided that, for some reason, Kundera's book will be read during the day, out in the open air, while Thoreau's Walden will be read in bed and indoors at night.
Malcolm is calling me upstairs. Apparently, the fool has forgotten my warning that he should hang his shirts to dry. The cotton has contracted and the shirts are shrunk. I'm off.