eye off the ball

It had been a month since it last rained, until today. I thought about either finding my cell phone I had lost somewhere between the local bar five blocks up the road and my apartment, or blissfully losing my mind watching the cats and dogs fall from the sky. It was sunday, at around 9:30 and I knew my girlfriend wouldn't be sleeping much longer. I had been up for the past hour staring out the window and drinking a cup of coffee. I can never sleep in late during a hangover. 

I thought of the idiom, raining cats and dogs and for some reason, but imagined them swimming in the sky, defying gravity, I blamed the cognitive dissonance on the hangover and felt my own equilibrium shift but found it amusing none the less. I thought back to my harder drinking days where my mantra the next morning while everyone was coping with their headaches and nausea was, "I drink for the hangover." The kind of cocky nonsense that can get you through anything while you're young and single. I thought about my girlfriend and brewed another cup of coffee anticipating her coming to the kitchen soon. I continued to stare out the window and watch time grow out of itself.

It seemed like as soon as I heard her shuffling around in the bedroom the last bit of coffee was brewing, I wondered if she unconsciously understood that it was time to wake up based on those final gurgling sounds of the coffee machine. Miracles like that are easier to see when you're taking your eye off the ball a bit.  She approached me slowly as sleepy eyed and rubbed her face into my shoulder and neck from behind me, she smelled a bit like cigarettes and her hair was messy. This is how I like her best I thought to myself. We didn't say anything for a while and just stared out the window together until she mentioned casually. "I wonder if your phone is wet." I just laughed, a bit too hard in fact, she smirked at me knowing all too well that I wasn't going to go looking for it. We agreed we would just call the bar later to check and to not worry about it. We sat for a longer while this time just sipping our coffee, sharing three cigarettes and staring out the window. 

"How about a little hair-of-the-dog?" she mentioned. "We still have a little whisky in the cabinet". I smiled so she smiled. She jumped up in a rush of caffeine and poured us both a small cup.

"Where do you think they got the expression, "raining cats and dogs?" I asked. 

"Maybe its because cats and dogs seem to have nothing to do with each other, yet they still go hand in hand." She responded. I was surprised how quick she came up with this, but wasn't sure what she was getting at. 

"I mean, cats and dogs have nothing to do with each other"

"I guess." I said still confused.

"They're different animals, different lifestyle, different habits, different personalities, but yet we always talk about cats and dogs as together." She insisted.

"We do lump them together a lot I guess. They are the two most common house pets you tend to see. " I was still unsure where she was going with this.

"So when you say, its raining cats and dogs, you're saying its raining like crazy, because of this crazy way that we have cats and dogs to have something to do with each other, it is the same way that cats and dogs have something to do with the rain."

I took a drink of whisky and drag from a cigarette and just let that sink in. Realizing if I focused on the thought too hard that it would just collapse, I thought that it would be impossible a thought to conceive without a bit of perturbation of the mind. 

"I mean think about it." She continued, "They are totally different species, one comes from the jungle as tigers and lions, the other came from the woods as wolves and coyotes, they couldn't be more different. Hold the fact that they have four legs, but there are plenty of animals with four legs that we would never put in with cats or dogs. But somehow we've managed to make them go hand in hand. And a lot of people have both, and they normally become good friends, cats and dogs. Its just strange how two things  seemingly so unrelated are a lot closer than they really appear."

I was at a loss, but felt like I could now see what she meant, finding it a miracle at all that one person could convey such a thought to another. Then for some reason I knew exactly what I wanted to do for the rest of the day. 

"Lets go to the aquarium."

She smiled, so I smiled.

 

Reviews

[roarke]

an aquarium trip for a hangover... different. D. this is some of the most natural writing I've read of yours. The setting and thoughts are well defined and move at a smooth pace. I liked the moment. Very good stuff.