Rain

Rain in the desert is really very inconvenient.

It's true! Everywhere else, rain is a part of the landscape. Let a farmer go a month without rain and listen to him bitch. Here, rain was clearly an afterthought for whoever designed the place. There are dry riverbeds all around, like natural gutters. Nine months out of the year, they're just in the way. For a few hours or days out of the remaining three months, they're really in the way. Because they're not dry. But did anybody get around to building bridges over them? Hell, no. Afterthoughts. For something that is just really very inconvenient.

I mean, what good does it do? Dig a ditch, that's when the rain will come along and loosen the clay, which will head right for the lowest point it can find. That would be where you dug your ditch. Which you now get to dig again. Convenient? I don't think so.

Sun, the landscape can deal with. It's made for sun. Most of the wildlife can't even live without sun, since most of the wildlife is cold-blooded. Wind? No problem! So some dirt blows around. There's lots of dirt. But rain is a real problem.

I'm only talking about rain because it's raining now. Right outside this window. It's August, mid-morning, and it should be bright as hell, dry as hell, hot as hell. Instead I'm thinking of finding a jacket and wondering which of my guns will rust behind my back. That's just not right. How's a guy supposed to cope with that? Huh?

Well, you cope with it the way you cope with the sun, and the wind. You just do, that's all.

That's the problem with people today. Too much bitching, not enough coping. And there I go bitching about it. A foolish consistency, Emerson said, is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. Personally I avoid consistency like the plague it is. Whenever that bothers me, I just remember that all the great atrocities in history were carried out in the name of philosophical purity. Consistency, when it isn't being really boring, is the father of horror. You wouldn't want me to become a monster, would you? After I've betrayed the revolution and declared myself President-For-Life? Scary thought, that. I'd make a terribly incompetent monster, and they're often the worst kind.

I sure wish it'd stop raining. It's been raining for hours, and it never does that. Well, okay – it did it yesterday. But that was different, because...well. It's just inconsistent, that's all.

Can't go out and play. So I think I'll write a book, instead.