10-06-2019::rain                                      .moji
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   Ludovica Einaudi - Ora https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1aReZsmVjw
   
   It's raining in London. And not just raining - I mean it's *really*
   coming down. 'Cats an' dogs,' we say. Commuter hour traveling home
   from work: minor delays and slow electric orange lights ripple and
   bend in the waterlogged entrances and on the shiny surfaces of the
   commuter trains. Caffeine breath, drenched workers crammed into
   carriages, involuntarily sharing whatever microbes are carried in
   the damp, this collective organism - so close together while
   world's apart. At Blackfriar's Bridge I make the effort to turn in
   my seat to catch the view of the river behind, beneath. Always
   surprised at how few seem to take in the view; eyes to the ground,
   or to the black mirror hand-deck. Headphones and chatter into
   microphones. E-readers, tablets. In two different carriages on my
   journey I find myself sitting next to someone reading Greek
   characters from an e-ink screen. 
   
   Those wireless earphones are widespread right now, have been for a
   few months. Like some foreign body that made its way into the local
   environment, finding some nectar to harvest and spread out like
   spores - a wave of infection that's either found some symbiosis or
   hasn't yet reached the apex of its extractive capacity upon the
   local ecology.  I read a few lines about the environmental content
   of these headphones a few weeks back; the tiny lithium batteries
   and plastic casing are just landfill waiting to happen. In
   16-months time the tiny batteries won't carry a charge suitable for
   the hours' of use the consumer wants. They'll end up in drawers,
   replaced, in landfill, in the cracks in the rocks beyond the
   platforms' edge - among the mice who live their whole lives blinded
   and half-deafened in the underworld of the underground railways,
   their fragile sensory gifts crushed by the blinding lights and
   heavy passage of the carriages, of the human world. Of the human
   world.  How much of anything isn't of the human world.

   I'm falling asleep on the long train journey back into the suburbs.
   Rainfall on the roof of the carriage picks up and intensifies the
   further out of town we reach. Lightning in the distance. Against a
   matte grey sky the same shade as my terminal background. I spent
   some hours the other weekend trying to 'rice' my desktop, before
   giving up, remembering those lessons I'd explored a few years back
   about avoiding the 'fetishisation' of the interface, of the
   machine; the tool as spectacle, as entertainment, as glitz and
   distraction rather than functionality, rather than tool. I gave up,
   remembering this research I had come across about a year ago about
   some ergonmic analysis of keystrokes to determine the most
   efficient design of key layout relative to language input. I opted
   for dull colours, and removed the translucent effect of the
   terminal against some beautiful background graphic, reckoning
   instead that a better design would be the most efficient for the
   eye; colours as designators, functional in contrast. Signifiers
   only of the machine logic beneath - that's what I want to get
   closer to. In comprehension.  Comprehension breaks down the
   distraction, the facade; these media require our literacy.

   The rain. The rain without wind is the steady piano flow of
   Ludovica Einaudi. Back at my hometown station, where I've been
   living with my folks this past couple of months until I get settled
   into the new work routine, and find some new place to stay back in
   town.  The rooftop gutters of the train station are bursting under
   the rainfall, and as dozens of commuters approach the passenger
   underpass it's being sealed off by station staff, as flows of
   rainfall are tracing the walls thick and vertical like a
   water-feature installation. My trainers are totally inappropriate
   for the weather, but I've got this waterproof jacket I scored off a
   mate last Summer. I'd cycled miles round his new flat in just
   t-shirt and jeans in the warm summer sun. That night, an unforeseen
   Summer rain broke through and so I waited into the wee hours with
   some friends, waiting for the rain to stop when cycling home at a
   late hour wouldn't be quite so dangerous. The rain didn't stop, but
   I stayed sober - or more sober than my friends around me - because
   of the ride I would have to take home, while they finished bottle
   after bottle. Later, at three in the morning, the rainfall had
   slowed but hadn't stopped. My friend gave me this waterproof jacket
   he'd had for years, no longer fits him. It's from South Korea. The
   make, I'm told, is the 'North Face' of South Korea. I'm grateful to
   be wearing it today on this walk home, after the train journey and
   just a small walk through these suburban neighbourhoods back home. 

   At the end of my street, a corner on the main road is heavily
   waterlogged. It's always been this way in the heavy-rain. I forget
   how close the cars come to the deep puddle as I'm hurriedly walking
   by, and an oncoming car blazes through the water, sending its arc
   way up past my waist, drenching me to the bone. It's a moment of
   shock, and then I'm smiling. Heightened. Joy. Rainwater on my
   cheeks, my soaked trousers against my skin. I'm a child of the
   human world. Of the human world. I'm no different from the mice
   beneath the machine. These forces; this human force, this nature
   force. It all acts on us. If only we could navigate it.  Have some
   control. Some sail to pull and guide us as we please.

   A few doors from my folks place I pass a man I know only to be a
   brother: his own brother passed away a couple years back. He used
   to push his older brother around the neighborhood in a wheelchair,
   for years - as long as I could remember. It's been twelve years
   since I lived in this house, like I am now, but I remember this
   guy. He's standing in the rain, smiling. Like me. In the distance:
   lightning, that grey terminal sky, and a Willow tree, its wooden
   centre darkened and waterlogged. Dark green leaves thick and full
   of water, like they should be. Sometimes I feel like we're afforded
   just enough beauty to sustain us and pacify us. To stop us from
   reaching out for something more. 

   -moji