Week two of Spanish school, and this afternoon I took the (in hindsight, somewhat audacious) decision to walk home across town. Only audacious insofar as I had evidently decided to ignore Mexico City's weather patterns, and overlook the fact that about 3pm each afternoon the skies open and the City is inundated. And so what should have been a relatively easy ~6km walk became an adventure in the rain. After about 5 minutes of quietly cursing whichever fool (I'm looking at you, The Spanish) decided to build a city on top of a lake and without any drainage infrastructure, I realized that I was already soaked, that I had Florence on my iPod, and this was a chance to enjoy the experience of wandering in the rain rather than hurrying to the next available taxi.
When it rains like this, although it's an everyday occurrence at the moment, it seems like a phenomenal experience. It was a battle to get home, and I had lakes in my boots, and my jeans were stuck to me and everything was wet. But it was awesome.
Florence herself was the perfect soundtrack to my walk. Moody and dramatic, she was a beautiful match for flashes of lightning and booms of thunder. The atmospheric climax to "Girl With One Eye", the pulsing of "Drumming Song", and the epic conclusion to "Cosmic Love" are all kind of conducive to a flash storm like this. What I love about this album is how it somehow manages to be slightly over the top and redemptive at the same time. It's a dramatic, intense experience, that leaves its listener smiling and uplifted. A wonderful album for a rainy day walk. And, by taking the time to slow down and look and listen, I really found that being stuck in a rain storm can actually be a really beautiful thing.
Still, I'm probably going to walk to school in the sun, rather than home in the rain from now on.
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