rain and bird and iPod

This morning was qualitatively different for me, somehow. Even though it was raining snowballs at 9am, and "slushing" the rest of the time; even though the sky was a silvery-gray and the wind damp and cold; I had the iPod going as I walked up to the bus stop and truly everything felt okay. Is this just an iPpod story? Dunno.

I listened to the Wiseguys and Mono and Happy Mondays; Technotronic and BT and Black Box and Bjork (running my puny 800 songs on shuffle.)

At the shelter on the parkway, I watched as a seagull hovered and wheeled and balanced over the wet intersection. He must have spotted a scrap of something, tantalizing garbage beneath the wheels of cars that hissed along the pavement. He moved his wings just a twitch now and again, only the occasional wingbeat; the planet almost seemed to spin beneath him, and he merely motionless as we tumbled around the axis of him up there, pearlescent bird beneath a cotton wool sky.

I'm still wearing my long black coat. I didn't bother with an umbrella, when the rain seems on the verge of snow, and the wind so gusty that an umbrella is impossible. My son has a new umbrella that he got at the zoo on Saturday; rainbow colors, with a tiger's head for a handle. He has carefully practiced opening and closing, opening and closing like a giant flowerin search of sun. And then, he quietly pried the plastic caps off each of the umbrellas ribs, exposing sharp points, and asked me politely if I would remove "the tent" altogether. So we talked about whether that was a good idea. He walked to the car with his father and the umbrella this morning, a boy satisfied with a new tool.

Everyone on the bus looked beautiful. It's the light, I think.