Tragedy Egad

¶It is still raining outside, right beyond my window, and the cars are making whooshes across the wet pavement. Water is dripping off the roofs all over the place, and down the porch shelters that are all up and down the street, where they're usually ill-kept and full of plenty of holes because they are, after all, both top and bottom, outside, and getting a little damaged. My hair is wet from the moisture in the air: a cold wetness that makes my feel like shivering, but no shivers come to me because the rest of me is warm. I guess it's about seventy degrees in here, maybe seventy-one or -two, I don't know. I don't have an atmospheric thermometer. I have the blinds drawn, but I know that if I had them open, I'd be seeing umbrellas bouncing along with no visible means of support. People are hunkered down in their houses and rooms, watching television, perhaps, or they could be sleeping, or maybe they're contemplating the rain as it falls and falls. The birds are quiet, and I wish I could tell you why they're always silent in the rain, and I've wondered about it too, but I have no answer. I don't know why they hide. Perhaps it's difficult to fly around in the rain. That seems obvious, doesn't it? I don't know anything useful. The moisture gets sucked up by the sky somehow, like it can float, and all this water forms into what we call clouds, which are really just bunches of drops of water that happen to get together without any will of their own. Then--something happens--and the water falls down to the earth again. I don't know how it decides to do that, but it does it all together at the same time. Something to do with barometers.

People like it when it's raining; there's plenty of proof to be had. Firstly, it gives a person a chance to do pretty much nothing. You can't go out, can you, when it's raining, at least not for very much, or for quite the amount of time you can be out when it's not raining. You don't want to be out hiking in the rain, now do you? And think of all the sports that no-one wants to be playing in the rain. I understand you're supposed to stay off golf courses in the rain: that has something to do with electrical storms. Skiing in the rain, though I've done it and I'm proud to have done it, isn't recommended. Secondly, think of the mythology involved. Forty days and forty nights! Plus, there's practically a deluge in every myth, like in Gilgamesh, and the flood in the Metamorphoses. It seems to be in every culture, including primitive North American stories, so I think it's easy to see that the possible destruction of the world through water (Phlebas the Phoenician, anyone?) is something we darkly desire despite it all. Recall the death instinct: isn't that at the dark heart of everything? So, rain is something positive when seen from certain aspects. However, it is also negative. I remember being out at a beach cottage--never mind where, at least for now--and it rained for three days. I was very upset, I was almost moved to tears on the third day, I was whining how everything was ruined. So, when it rains for more than a day, more than twenty-four hours, say, you get somewhat sick of the stuff. However, today, it's only been raining since the middle of the night. Somewhere before dawn it started, and maybe it's growing bright out there. I don't know.

¶Time has passed, now that I've gotten back to writing down events. It's been four days since the above, and it's still raining outside. At one point, yesterday or the day before, it seemed to be clearing up, but that was just false. We haven't had a single moment without the steady sounds of water falling from the sky. This is the sixth or seventh day of this, and it's very depressing, really. How can it rain for so long? Woe is me? No, that's not true at all. Certainly, this is nothing as extraordinary as I believe it is. It must have happened before, that's almost certain. It's an anomaly, as they say. It's happening, and the laws of averages say these events should take place, since we're living in a statistical world, and though this event is at the further scale of the bell curve, it's something we just have to go through. My neighbour told me about a time when he was a boy, that it rained for weeks. I'm the same age as him, yet I don't remember such an event. I didn't ask where he'd been living, which may make a difference. He says the reports say it's not raining five hundred miles away: that it's a weather event taking place here, and only here. The winds will pick up eventually, he says, and the clouds will dissipate and we'll forget about it for the most part, statistics say so, or if there is any memory of it, it'll show up in the newspapers on anniversaries of these dates. I don't think he's wrong, exactly, because he's an upstanding guy and he'd never intentionally mislead me. So, I guess it's only something I feel in my bones. What do I feel?

Sometimes I, like everyone else, stops to take stock of myself. I sort of give myself a biography, as everyone else does. (As the song goes: How did I get here?) I'm independently wealthy, because I had sensible parents who happened to die at the same time, and not by my hands. The two of them were themselves wealthy, because of family. I don't work because I don't have to. I'm lucky, I guess. I live modestly, though, in a two-bedroom townhouse in a nicer part of town. I have neighbours who I talk to, though I try not to talk to them too much because it was make me feel less independent. I don't have any pets and I don't like indoor plants. My days while away such that I'm not sure if this is Tuesday or Wednesday; I have other people, robot people, Internet people, who take care of things like that for me. (I don't have robots; I'm merely talking about rote mechanization.) Since I don't have to do anything, I believe it's incumbent upon me to not do anything, and leave all the wealth creation to the rest of the population who would be more inclined than I am in doing all that Adam Smith stuff. Let them take a crack at it, I say! They can all become Titans of Industry, and I must not stand in their way by competing with them. So, when it starts to rain like this, I have the leisure to remark upon it, while the rest of this city works on and on for their benefits. I watch streaming channels most of the day, but sometimes I manage to string a sentence or two together. All in all, I spend my time keeping out of trouble and keeping out of the way.

¶I think four days have passed since I last wrote in this notebook, this green notebook I bought some three weeks ago, intending to keep track of things as well as possible, and I think it may be the case that I bought it the day before it started raining, though it could have been two days before it started raining; in any case, it's something like four days now since I wrote the above, and it has kept raining. Yesterday I went out to buy an umbrella because I've never had one, since I so seldom go out and therefore can usually manage to keep indoors in inclement weather, but sometimes you have to go out and buy things, things like food, which is what I did after buying the umbrella and figuring out how to operate it. (A week ago, I went out in the rain to go to the market, but I didn't buy an umbrella then because I expected it to stop raining later that day, which was a hope dashed by sunset.) People seemed resigned to the rain, or maybe they were quietly alarmed, it was hard to know which. Everyone either didn't care or were too frightened to show it. Apparently, so I learned from the radio, the area in which it was raining was shrinking slowly: we were in a cyclonic maelstrom of some kind or another, with the winds slowly swirling around high up in the atmosphere, keeping the wet weather in a sort of an oval overhead. None of this made much sense to me, because I figured wouldn't the rotation of the earth be making some headway? How could this oval remain, how's it said, geodesical? "We just have to wait for the clouds to empty," said some guy. "Nothing to do but wait."

Since this is approaching something disaster-level, or so I fear, I should begin making a list of things I possess, a list which I shall be able to provide to my obsequious insurance company. (I can finalize all this tomorrow morning, if I'm so inclined. On the other hand, maybe I'll put it off for a while. There's no hurry just yet.) My townhouse has three stories, plus a space below in an underground parking lot. Down there, in my parking space, sits a perfectly good Fiat, coloured metallic green, rarely taken out. Through a locked door you come to a small storage space. I'll skip the contents of that since it would take too much of an effort to recall what-all's down there. Proceeding up nine stairs you come to the living-room space, 'the den', with a couch, a stereo, a television, a liquor bar. There's also a washroom down here, and a washing machine and a dryer in a separate room. Pipes and valves and so on are also in there. Up another flight, and it's a front living-room, rarely used, but with all the best furnishings I own through inheritance. (I really raided their place, ho-boy! Beat everyone to the punch!) A kitchen most modern and functional, which has been supplied with all the latest gadgetry. (I keep track of design trends.) Another staircase up gets you to the bedrooms. There's three. One has a bed, a dresser, and little else. Another room has a bed, a dresser, and little else. The third room, the one that looks out onto the street, is the one I'm sitting in right now. If I open the blinds, I can see the rain coming down endlessly, quickly, or slowly. (Note to self: Itemize everything properly soon, in case there's a flood.)

¶I went out this morning (it's four days later, I think) to see the lay of the neighbourhood land. It's astonishing to see what a great deal of rain can do to trees and grass. The former have lost a lot of leaves, and the ground underneath is like rotten mush into which half your shoe could easily disappear. The latter was all prone and pointing to wherever downhill was, like the hairs on a head, and likewise obedient to gravity. Does grass cause hair? I should look into that. There's an easy analogy, but is the connection deeper? I should look into that. I wonder if everyone else is going a little crazy around here. In the underground garage I was looking at my Fiat, thinking about selling it since I don't like the possessiveness of it, when my neighbour came out his door. I greeted him, and I found out what he was thinking, namely, he was thinking of getting out of the rain. "It seems all you have to do is drive forty miles, and you're onto dry land." I thought this was pretty unlikely, impossible even, but he persisted. "We're not living in some kind of fantasy, you know. Everyone knows that if you travel forty or so miles, you're out of the rain. My sister out in Ottawa says it's fine there, for autumn." I was going to counter that the situation couldn't last much longer, that there had to logically or mathematically be a break, when the clouds get empty or the oval or circle or whatever of rain has moved along, and then where would he be? but I didn't counter this, because I didn't have it in my head in any good way at the time. It's only now that I got a good thought of it.

I walked up the ramp and along the driveway until I was at the front of my townhouse. I didn't have my umbrella, but, then again, I didn't know I was going to go to the front of my townhouse. I looked at my townhouse. I kind of cheated my brother out of any money, and I started on it, my scheme, very early in life. All I had to do was to put my brother in a slightly shady light. Once, I told my parents that some money had been stolen by someone in my brother's class, and no-one knew who dunnit. It took a couple days for the poison to work. He told them he didn't know a thing about any stolen money, and it was left at that. (My parents of course didn't reveal the source of their knowledge, good kid and truthful was I.) They appeared to forget about the whole thing, but I know they didn't. They were now primed for some other suspicion. My brother was affected, by their slight removal of affection. He actually started getting into trouble, all on his own without any help from me. Smoking, drinking, drugs. He went down, not to the very bottom, but low enough that he wasn't trusted with anything. I rose by comparison, and I was sworn to the notion that I would be responsible for him for the rest of my life. Nodding slowly, I accepted the position. I would be the one who would control my generation. He couldn't do it, not with the way he was carrying on. There wasn't anything I could do about it, such is the burden or responsibility. You're put into certain situations.

¶According to the radio, which, for some reason, I am trusting today, it's now been raining for almost three weeks. I didn't keep track well enough to prove them right, but I am going to agree with them. There's been nearly three weeks of rain coming down in this area, or zone as they are liking to call it, and of course they have an explanation for it, because radio likes explanations because they feel it gives them power over the world. This explanation business is rather interesting, though; apparently artificial intelligence operates a lot like the radio in that it will give you an answer every time, even if the answer is wrong; I understand it will even make up references to documents that don't exist; I see that as proof they're programmed and made possible by people who themselves feel like they have to have answers for everything; digression done. The radio also says the 'eye' of the storm, that's what they're calling it, continues to get smaller, which is to say that the edges of the cloud formation are drying up and stopping. Meanwhile, the rainy area is down to seven miles across, I think that's what they said, I think that's the number they gave. However, I think they're guessing at that since I can't believe weatherpeople have a measurement like that handy. It can't be based on much, since, as they say, this is all an 'anomaly', caused by it being so dry last month (another explanation!), or because of unusual sunspots (another explanation!). As it stands, they say, it's to be expected that the cloud formation is getting smaller, though perhaps denser; they admit they're guessing about that last bit. You have to give them some credit every now and then.

Attention, attention. I'm selling my car. I don't want it any more. It doesn't matter to me, and everything I want is within walking distance, and the things I don't relatively speaking do without want are a streetcar away. I think I'm going to get these pages published, probably in the local paper, if they'll have them, all this raw material that hasn't even been proofread, and if they want to proofread it, they can go ahead and do it. I think there's something of interest here, if I do say so myself. It's got drama and tension, and who knows how it will end? Will the rain never cease? Will flood waters start to rise? (They haven't yet; I think we have great sewers taking the water away to the places where it isn't raining, with everything balancing out in the end.) I'm going to get this published soon enough, and then, dear reader, you can read it, and you can read that I've got a Fiat for sale, seven years old, hardly used, a vanity purchase anyway, an unnecessary thing, better to be used than allowed to rot away in a garage. Not many miles on it, as you can infer. It's a pain to keep it operational when you hardly touch it. It's a car, you put gasoline in it, and it goes places. It's also a portable office, with a half-decent trunk and a little back seat area for all your papers and books and food. Well now this is vain. I'm never going to get this published. I'm spinning my wheels, I don't have to get anything published, and I'm like my car, which is never going anywhere ever again. Well, maybe I'll put my umbrella over me and go to a bar. I think I got some things to read.

¶Some people come up with interesting programs to build up a story. I think it's a hidden trick they all use; I mean, after all, one can't simply write and write and write as if there wasn't some sort of deeper order to the thing. Dickens wrote pretty complicated outlines, P.G. Wodehouse spent three-fifths of his time coming up with his plots, and I-don't-know how much preparation Conrad put into his novels, but it obviously took a lot of scheming. Then there's the weirdos, the ones who decide they want to write a whole novel without using any vowels, or they want the shapes of their poems to resemble urns or hearts or diamonds or such, and there's one guy who built a whole novel using the knight's moves on a ten-by-ten chessboard, visiting every square once and only once. What I'm getting at is that these schemes not only give a beginning to the compositions, but they also determine when they're going to end. Chessboard guy had to stop at one hundred; that Italian guy ran out of cities to describe. Anthologies are very different, of course. The 1001 Nights was only limited to 1001 chapters, but the division between chapter 543 and chapter 544 could easily be a paragraph earlier or later, whatever, just so there were 1001 of them in total. But this here, this diary or journal, doesn't have any structure at all. I don't know when or if I'll stop before I get stopped, if you get me. It could go on indefinitely; I don't see there's any reason to stop at any particular point. I guess that's why I'm not a professional or even good writer. I'm going to go on and on until I've run out of sentences.

I'm not losing my mind even though we're passed the three-week mark for the rains and even though the laminated posters I've put up around the neighbourhood about my car, laminated (the posters, not the car) with little perforated tags with my phone number upon them at the bottom of the poster, haven't had any of their tags detached, and even though the neighbourhood had been day-by-day more desolate as people have trickled out in search of drier ground, and even though my favourite prostitute has told me she can't come into my area because the damp air plays havoc with her split ends thereby making her unsalable for the rest of any particular day, and even though the newspapers have stopped because the deliverers have run out of protective plastic bags. The electricity is still functioning, at least most of the time (for I awoke yesterday morning to discover the power had gone out, learning thus due to the many flashing 12:00s around my townhouse), and there's still a market close by run by Eastern Europeans who have seen it all really and who are not afraid of a little or a lot of water. The story is that the storm system or the rain system or what do you want to call it has gotten smaller and is in fact dissipating. There's less rain overall though there's a ten-block area (around me) in which there has been no change and no change is expected. There's been no wind and nothing is going to chase the clouds away, there's something of a song with that line in it, something from the 30s or before. I haven't seen that neighbour of mine for Oh now I remember he fled off about two days or two weeks ago I can't remember when.

¶This is generally a low-crime neighbourhood, off on a side street, and a one-way side street at that, and the cars go west to east all day long, since who knows when. Last night, we finally had a certifiable crime on the street, across the street from me, five houses to the east. A woman named Cathy or Kathy killed herself, but not before killing her daughter and starting a fire in the kitchen. She almost survived. She wasn't quite dead when the police got there, last night. She was in the bathtub fully dressed, warm water flowing over the edges, red with the blood she'd cut from her wrists. That's what I've heard anyway; I don't have any confirmation except for one of my neighbours a couple houses closer to the scene of the crime. I don't know the daughter's name, and neither did that neighbour of mine. The swirling lights woke me up, and I actually went out to investigate, my umbrella protecting me from the continual rain. The neighbour surmised: it had to do with some kind of a divorce or separation that had taken place about a month earlier, which makes it within the time of the rains. What can you do with such a place? I guess the husband has by this time made an appearance somewhere, unless he's miles and miles away, maybe even in another country. Maybe he can't be found! He'll find out soon enough, I suppose: No answer to the telephones, a curious situation, his arrival in front of the house. No answer; someone sees him knocking at the door, and has to tell him what happened. Boy, I'd hate to be the person to tell him! It seems the house is being avoided, too. People are crossing the street to avoid it. It's got to do with the rain, of course.

Everything has to do with the rain. Everything is damp. I washed my clothes the other day, and they were musty about five minutes after. Doors are swelling out and I can't get three of them closed. The grass has the consistency of boiled spinach. The back of the trees, it's practically peeling off. Over at the mall they're having trouble with the air conditioning. It wasn't built for such moisture, and the pools on the roof make fixing it treacherous. Everyone smells wet over there in the mall. I haven't seen many animals out; perhaps they've migrated like a sizable number of humans. We notice the stink of others, but not of ourselves. The size of the cloud has continued to get smaller, and now it's about four blocks square. I'm still on the periphery, almost, but the cloud is shrinking in a way offset from the centre. We're all on edge, waiting for it to end, because it has to end eventually, unless we're somehow in an anomalously tiny rain forest or something that will one day be called a rain forest. In the kitchen cupboard everything is stuck together. The sugar is one solid mass, crystalized almost, reduced to being a weapon and little more. The flour is pastily dense, the rice is glutenously massed. Not even the underground parking lot is safe. The cars look like they're melting. Their tires are thickened up and fat and droopy like they can't hold weight. No-one has checked their tires, of course. Where could you do such a thing? So we're waiting it out, waiting for a clear sky, when we'll see to everything and make our repairs. It can't keep going like this, it's intolerable.

¶Surprise, surprise, Dear Diary. My brother called me last night at around nine thirty. I could tell he was a little drunk, and getting drunker, but even so it was nice to hear from him. He gave me the idea he was living some hundred miles away from me. He told me he'd heard about the strange rain situation, and about the anomaly it was, and he said the talk was all over the place. I said: "Hey, it's strange anyone knows about it. I guess it makes me and my neighbours kind of famous." He said: "That's right! An' I remembered your address, an' I knew you were in it, an' that's why I called." We were both very civil, considering. He told me he had a pretty good job that paid well. He didn't elaborate past that, but I wished him the best in it, without saying I hoped he didn't get fired again. He got me to describe the rain, and what it was like to get rained on for four straight weeks, two fortnights! I told him what I knew, which wasn't that much, but he wanted to know, so I told him what I could. I knew when to stop talking, and I stopped talking about it. Then, what do you know, he apologized for something I barely remembered. It had to do with how he'd burned me once with hot tea. I tried to remember it all clearly, but I'm afraid I couldn't, and I still can't. I said: "I accept your apology, even though I barely remember it. Yes, I accept." He got maudlin, and said it was really good to be in touch with me. He wanted to go forward with it, to let the past be the past. I gave him my email address, but I made a single mistake in it. Ah me. Plausible deniability.

As you can understand, the rain has continued. I wonder what me and the people around me will feel like once it's stopped, once we're no longer living in this swamp, this rain forest, this Blade Runner. Do we even remember what it's like to not have it raining all the time? It was a whole month ago. This isn't like winter, this isn't cold, this isn't something we're guaranteed to get through. The area of the rain has been getting smaller and smaller. Apparently, it's over about four blocks now, and I'm in one of those four. It means we can go out and walk for ten minutes and we're in dry land. We have to clamber over the sandbags that are set up around our area to prevent water from ruining the lawns of people a quarter-mile distant, but that's doable. Within our zone, we're all a bit unhappy with the situation. Our homes are showing signs of ruin. Without even getting in, the rains have saturated walls and ceilings. My bedroom ceiling is starting to sag and there's a steady drip coming down from the nadir of the sag. It's going to collapse on top of me, I know it, if I'm caught sleeping near it, so I'm sleeping on the couch in my lower level. I check the saggy ceiling every day, and it may be getting lower and lower but I haven't been collecting any evidence of it. It's so hard to see something that's happening so slowly. Every day is much like the last, but I'm not leaving. This is my home, and I've sacrificed so much for it. I'm not saying I was actively involved in the deaths of my parents, but let's also say I didn't do much to stop it from happening.

¶This morning and afternoon and evening, I watched the entirety of a whole year of a cop show called Protect. Thirteen entire episodes, one after another. Four episodes, then a lunch break, then six episodes, and dinner, then the last three episodes. I couldn't stop myself. I hated every minute of that program. The characters were all very stupid and they said stupid things that their characters thought were witty or amusing, and it was all edited so that it looked like these little bon mots were somehow amusing or profound or telling or who the fuck knows what. The problems they had were so petty, even the murders they had to solve like clockwork every forty minutes or so were not interesting. And yet, I kept watching the fucking thing. I didn't know how to stop myself, because what else did I have to do? I looked at my clock every once in a while, wondering if I could take this punishment for the entire day, and I did, I put myself through something like torture, and for what? Because I had nothing else to do, that's what. They call it stir crazy, I know you know, and I would cringe and sigh at this American piece of garbage television show and wondering how something so stupid could even get made in the first place. The women in the show pretended they were so tough and attractive, and the men in the show pretended they were so tough and attractive. But none of them were, in the second place, attractive, and, in the first place, only television-tough. As if I'd be afraid of one of these jokers arresting me! As if I wouldn't laugh in their stupid faces!

With all this rain coming down—and I'm not leaving!--it seems, nay, it's true, very few people want to come into this block. In fact, I think I'm now the only one living here. Everyone else has left for other grounds. The garbage is piling up because the garbage guys didn't come by yesterday, and I didn't put anything out last week. It's very quiet here, except for the incessant rain. It's like I'm living alone on an island, or a reverse-island, as the case may be, or in the middle of the lake, which sounds a little better. The rain is falling on me and me alone. The newspapers have gotten bored with the anomaly of a rainstorm of one square block. They think they've got it explained. They expect it to end any day. No progress is to be reported. It's just one of those things. Damp everywhere, just one of those things. Rain for a month? We found some similar events in the archives, and they ended, so this one will end too. Maybe the Guiness Book of World Records people will be interested, but we're not. In any case, the block is empty. Everyone has left, they're all accounted for. The trees are expected to die. An expert told us trees can only absorb so much rain, then they rot where they stand. There are no insects, no vermin, no varmints. It will be a 'write-off'. New houses will have to be built, and the cycle of life will start again. We don't know exactly when that will take place, but it'll stop soon, because this is getting ridiculous. Yes, that's the word, their word, my word, for it: ridiculous. It's going to stop. If not today, tomorrow. If not this week, next week. If not this month, next month. If not this year, next year.

¶After all, what is it, what is it? The atmosphere is like a blanket around the planet earth, and it's all held together with gravity. There's a lot of water in there--someone somewhere said the planet should be called Water instead of Earth--and everything is mostly wet, except for the places called deserts. Let's ignore them for now now where was I? The sun makes the water evaporate somehow, it turns to a gas, that's right, and it floats up to a height, I think there's two heights for different clouds, how the particles know how high to go I don't understand, but they're held there by the outer sphere of the atmosphere, I didn't get that until now. The water particles naturally eddy together as if they were on, in, anywhere, and they look to us to be clouds, but to clouds themselves they don't look like anything. So they're all up there, minding their own businesses, and then something happens to a whole bunch of them who are somehow gathered together, and they all decide to fall. They fall to the earth, Earth, then later they go back up again. They're part-timers. They have two homes. They go back and forth from home to home and I don't know which is their primary home and their secondary home. Up and down and up and down, forever, I suppose. I only have one home.

It's still raining, as no doubt you've gathered. Scientists are in the neighbourhood, expecting to understand something or other. I can see them through my window. They don't know I'm here, and I don't know why they're there. What can they hope to expect? What knowledge can they get from this? The rain has been falling from somewhat over thirty-six days. The cloud is now over my house and only my house. Outside, somewhere in the next couple blocks, people are returning to their homes. The worst is over for them, and they can get on with their miserable useless lives. Meanwhile, here I make my stand, against whatever you have to throw at me, Egad, and I'll go on writing as if it's the only activity I have left. It's late afternoon. Perhaps the weather report says sunny through the afternoon, followed by a cloudless night, which is perfect for all you star-gazers out there. I've got plenty of TV dinners down in the freezer, enough for at least a week, and so I'm not letting anyone know I'm here. They can all go on blindly for all I care. They're not suffering. In some cases, they may actually believe they're happy. The lights go out every once in a while, but then they turn on again. Someone's testing something, or there's a short circuit somewhere. Even when the light goes, I won't. There's not much light to be had without them, but it's enough. Next couple days should bring about a change.