Here in Cincy, it’s been a rainy day. My sister was dropped off at the airport to visit my other sister currently at some Vermont college who knows some folks that went to Bennington college, the same one that Donna Tartt wrote about as “Hampden college” in The Secret History. She says all the people she knows who go there are very annoying. I’ve been playing only child for the past couple hours, and so tonight, after some tasty pho that my parents called spicy despite the fact it wasn’t really that spicy, I went to go do some indoor minigolf with my dad at a place light up with blacklights. The orange golf ball and the blue golf ball glowed in the black lights and left a colorful trail in the air when hit in a way reminding me of that one Yayayi bootleg album cover, also reminding me I could’ve listened to Unknown Album and it would’ve fit the vibe as much as the album I actually was listening to- Christtt’s Deep Dark Trench. This album’s incredibly surreal and I find it impressive how many different vibes and weird absurdist dreamscapes it can switch between in the course of one song- fitting for this dreamy minigolf place. At some point, I found an extra club and proceeded to play the game with one hand, albeit badly. An experience.

It wasn’t until halfway through walking I got a taste of thunder, destroying the pleasant sounds of the applause of the rain. At about here, I started listening to Sky Limousine’s Brothers. The cover seemed to fit. The album itself is brutal and ominous but contains such an eternal peace. An inescapably grey sky… A man parked his car, someone in the back seat opened the door and threw out a handful of trash onto the lawn. I couldn’t do much more than viciously side eye the passenger, while slowing my walking speed a little to get in extra judgemental staring. High synths and clashy metal noises, sirens cut through a sonic fog here. I could stay here forever, as the rain hits the ground and I walk in the alley between my family and my neighbors’ house to recycle a can, I can smell cigarettes from the neighbor’s living room. I wish people talked about things in their reviews other than just how miserable they are and how terrible everything is. Misery loves company! Go outside and write about what you see! Write about nature! Write about something good that happened to you today.

All is calm… going into this I expected dull spacey ambience, but what I got was much more. This afternoon, when the rain finally came, I put on a red waterproof jacket overtop of the jacket I was already wearing, holding an ice cold can of lemon lime zero calorie seltzer water with a mercilessly dented top that the soda tab couldn’t even bust in. Gentle raindrops fell. Outside, droplets like parachuting army men fell in black streams of water pressed between an invisible force and curb. It was unexpectedly cold, my hair quickly became messy and thrown about with a firm gust of wind brushing against my face. So, thanks Divi5e for the recommendation, in other words.

Rain is my favorite weather! Winter was fun and all but the emergence of spring is quite welcome! Point is, I got up excitedly at about 7:30 (I’m not usually one for sleeping in, usually I wake up around nine, seven if I’m feeling energetic, ten if I’m particularly sluggish) as I was awoken by the fierce crushing of thunder which the weather forecasts had all warned me about- I’d loaded a few albums on my MP3 player for the going outside experience afterwards. Sadly though, the crushing rumbling ambience of thunder was not present by the time I’d taken a shower and had breakfast. So instead of listening to the half dozen albums I’d planned to hear, I added Pure Guava to the ol’ Sandisk because I think the album embodies the drizzly morning after you fall asleep to raindrops pounding against your rooftop. At that point I went outside carrying a small half sized bottle of zero sugar lemon lime Gatorade wearing my crimson jacket and salmon colored shirt, dark blue slacks and black and yellow shoes with zigzag symbol on the side from a brand I don’t recognize. The walk was very pleasant, water pooling up in the gutters lethargically trickled into the storm drains at a snail’s pace… taste the waste, baby, taste the waste…

The moon was a pumpkin shade of orange this morning, bathed in hazy blue clouds that’d stuck around for the party late after midnight, things are heating up in Cincinnati, it was seventy degrees yesterday. On the car ride to school, I opened the stereo concert with Plantasia (it was the first song to autoplay when I plugged in my MP3 player), and then listened to two songs from Shadow of Marlboro Man. I decided maybe it’d be a good time to hear Theme for Gasoline Weirdo because I feel like the orange moon was best fit for it. The whole car ride we drove behind some tool who forgot to use his turn signal everytime, someone who, seeing their dadly face, was evidently not a student driver, rather just someone speedrunning trying to get a ticket. I, of course, made it to school a little later than desired (so, at the normal time, I like arriving early), as I had spent a couple minutes importing the mp3s of Taterbug’s discog. However, I’d say it was worth it. The moon was gone by the time I arrived at the place’s entrance.