Agonia

I am reporting, in a timorous condition, from what I suspect to be a pause for prayer (given it’s the Lenten season) during our major AGONIA rain weather event.  Agonia from the latin meaning agony. Agon from the Greek inferring competition.  The weather was pure agony today. Despair. Competitive agony 7-12 long hours of it. Each hour competing with the next not to allow any hint of light through the busted dimmer switch.

This megoostifluff (meaning Lord knows what just made it up — mega-chunk-of non stop suffocating goose arse blinding you) weather event came on the back of several rain events this week and utterly sunk me. It was raining inside my brain from the moment I looked out this morning. it was so perilously dark I wondered what drug could possibly ever help the human brain deal with this. I coined the term, being mentally Shackletoned as in spending hours trying like Shackleton to put foot one in front of other despite only walking from kitchen table to kettle, rather than submitting to the upper peak of Everest.

I was dispatched outside in a request from a writer friend  in Toronto to go and investigate whether or not she was in the Vancouver Sun today. I took off on this quest with no wind at my back because well there was no wind today, just the water canons overhead. Now it is common enough that when one exits the second floor that the elements even if they are misbehaving or challenging provoke a sense of vigor. Not during the Agonia weather event, far from it. These weather elements succeeded in sending the population even further down the manhole! Oh but you just need to take shelter and regard it with a warm drink I told myself. No! Another rebuke! As I looked out at it it only reinforced and furthered the agony it was.

My fave lines today came from two different friends “it would even depress the saints” texted one friend. “You wouldn’t put a rumour out in this weather” was the second.

It is still watery sounding out there, but no longer torrential. The other good news is the clocks go forward an hour overnight so if it continues with the agony-infused water canon showdown we will have one less hour to endure it tomorrow.

Finally the strangest sight today was right beside the grocery store on one of the busiest routes in the city, in the middle of this epic rain event, a man was very publicly piddling against the shop wall. (A toilet being approx 4 steps away from him, clearly he felt there wasn’t enough public watering happening).

By night I read. I read and I read and I read like I was on the quest for oxygen. I contemplated a stipend or a patronage idea where people could be paid only to read.

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