THE RAIN FALLS, IT FALLS ON OUR HEADS, AND WE LET IT.

He walked up the stairs from the subway. He was a bit buzzed from the bottle of wine he had just finished with a friend, which he was pleased with. He always thought that sharing a bottle with a friend is one of the truer pleasures still available to him in this world. That and smelling the wood burning in a fireplace.
It was raining out. Not a heavy rain but a mere drizzle not even worthy of an opened umbrella. It felt okay as the little drops of water gently hit his face. He felt like he was having 'a moment' like he's seen actors have in movies when they felt liberated or cleansed. Pela's song 'Latitudes' was playing in his ears and he thought no song could be more appropriate for right now. Perhaps Coldplay's 'Clocks' would have worked, he thought, but that is so cliché' I'm almost embarrassed for thinking it.

As he made his way down the block to his apartment, he closed his eyes. He wasn't sure why. It just seemed like a good idea. Every thing happening right now was to experience a moment...or rather, more appropriately, to assist the moment in happening correctly. As he walked into the slight refreshing drizzle, with his head tilted upwards, as the music played in his ears, he went elsewhere. He couldn't help but think of her. He sighed. Although, he didn't want to think of her, he did. As disappointed as he was in himself, he didn't think it worthy to fight his thoughts. We are like a photo album, he considered, and with every person we love, we meet, every friend we befriend...they become the pictures that fill us. Without them, we are just an empty album. And to continue in this metaphor, because he so loved metaphors, he wouldn't want to lose any the pictures forever. While he was still not ready to look at some of them, nevertheless, he wouldn't want to take them out of the album to tear them up or burn them or to leave them out in the street so someone could find them lying on the sidewalk near the garbage and wonder who those people are and do they miss this lost picture. Gosh, he would think, they sure do look happy.

This made him laugh. Sometimes photos can be so deceiving. They are literally moments caught in time and they have nothing to do with the present. Sometimes, he continued, they can almost contradict the present. Look at four months ago. Ha, he laughed again. Four months ago had nothing to do with now and now has nothing, absolutely nothing, zero, to do with four months ago. It frustrated him how the past only existed in the past. How he could not look into the pictures and wish that moment's return. It's my moment, he argued. Shouldn't I have the flexibility to re-experience it whenever I please?

He continued down the street with his eyes still closed. In his tipsy condition, the unknowing made him both slightly nervous and excited but he would not open his eyes just yet because the moment must continue. Yes, he thought. For the moment! Then he began to think of others and wonder about them, as well. He regretted the unnecessary friction he experienced with some. He even regretted the tensions that existed for significant reason but reality dictated that those tensions were still necessary so he would let them be. Sometimes he had to wait for hours, months, days, or years for those conflicts to subside. He wished he didn't miss people. He once had a friend that would always say I don't miss anyone. He never believed the friend because, really, how was that possible? You had to miss someone at some point?
But then he spent a few weeks overseas with that friend and never did he hear Friend express any longing. Maybe it was possible. Maybe he truly didn't miss anyone. And could I be like that?

He finally opened his eyes, standing right before his apartment building. He walked towards the door and his doorman opened it for him.
'How's it going," the doorman asked.
"Everything is great,' he said back.

And with this, his moment was over.