The sound of water dripping off the trees and the smell of wet mud takes me far from this huge city where I live. It lands me in these other places. Ranches. Lake cabins. Tent camping. Small towns I know as well as my hands. Pictures I've lived a thousand times. The way the air feels on my skin is enough to make my suburban backyard remind me of a jungle I visited only once but which stayed lodged in my chest somewhere as vivid as the places I grew up in. Why is the rain so potent now?
For two days it has rained. The southern California ground is so dehydrated it barely understands how to absorb all the water. It rolls away, down cement waterways filled with trash and trees. I live in a strange place that I love dearly and that changes faster than any place I've ever known. It pushes me to move away and pulls me back to stay. It has little patience for my nostalgia, but romanticizes its own short history. It is a city of contrast and contradiction and when it rains it practically turns upside down. The sky is so blue I don't recognize it and for a minute I think I live somewhere wild and free.
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