It’s slushing here. There’s not really a word for this combination of rain, sleet, snow, and sporadic hail, other than “Ugh!” All the little birds have that bedraggled snowed-on look, and all the squirrels are covered in damp spikes, the way your eyelashes get in the rain, only covering their entire bodies. If there was some lift to the spikes, they’d look punk, but instead they just look soggy.

The wettest I think I’ve ever been–a sort of bone-deep, pervasive wetness that massively transcended the mere wetness that you get from, say, swimming–was this time, many years ago, when James and I were at a friend’s house, took acid, and walked home. It was a good walk, myabe three miles, but this sort of thing doesn’t bother you when you’re tripping.

Except that it rained.

And rained.

And rained.

It was spring in Minnesota. We were wearing trenchcoats. I was wearing a WOOL trenchcoat. It’s a good thing I was higher than the pope, because I was lugging around probably twenty pounds of soaking wet wool. James and I giggled and sploshed our way most of the way home, fascinated by the swirling rivers in the gutters, then stopped in to see a friend who combined the best traits of petty thug and Jewish mother. He freaked out, perhaps worried we’d die of exposure in his living room, and threw our coats in his dryer, and made us towel off, and thus my memory of a really bone-deep sogginess is intertwined with the memory of watching MTV’s animated run ofThe Maxx.

I don’t really miss those days, to be honest–I have less time, but more money, and I like to think that my sense of slightly bedraggled wonder is mostly intact–but what I DO miss is the body. If I did something like that now, I’d be laid up for two days from the hangover and a week from whatever attacked after such an immune system shattering event. Hell, I feel a cold coming on just watching the poor soggy little squirrels.

I think I’ll give ’em an extra ration of sunflower seeds. Nobody should have to go out on a day like this.

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