Old Sport!

For as long as I can remember, I've had a strong impulse to go out into rain when it's pouring. I only have memories of acting on this in any way since I moved to Dorset, but it seems a want I've had for a long time.

I have an image of being in another bedroom of the house that my brother now shares with his girlfriend, curled up on the windowseat with my arm hanging out into the hard rain, hand slowly going numb as the water hit it. It's one of the only times I feel truly alive around here.

Back in Sweden, there was some sort of storm that was so bad the trams stopped running, and the roads flooded. The front of the restaurant Moony works at is rounded with the logo across it, and it worked as some sort of waterfall, so if you stood on the glass of that area it was like being in a waterfall. It was so awesome that Moony and her colleagues, and the few customers, ended up crowding around the windows, taking photos, talking to each other about how weird it was that the sky seemed like 10pm rather than 11am.

I felt like I should try to prove to Moony's colleagues that I was a responsible young man, rather than the 15 year old pre-pubescent kid I know I resemble, so I kept myself together then.

Apparently it hasn't rained in this part of England for a while. I know, what a break in the stereotype. But this evening, out of fucking nowhere, there was sudden torrential downpour. Out of my window it looked like small slices of silver. I couldn't help but pull down my window and do what I always did, stick my arm out and just feel the weather.

-WARNING, GREAT GATSBY SPOILERS YONDER-

And something weird, that struck me as I looked out over the rooftops, to the glowing lights through the mist. That iconic symbol of Jay Gatsby looking out across the water, to the green light at the end of Daisy Buchanan's place. That light, as far as I can remember, symbolises his 'Murican dream. The life he wants with Daisy where everything is fine, and she's just across the water. But even once he has her, he can't stop staring out at the light, because he's started dreaming and hoping for something that reality can never fulfill. He's a hopelss romantic, a dreamer, and that's his downfall.

As I stared out at the white lights that suggest cars on a distant road through the mist and/or cloudbank, because both are sometimes possible here, weirdly, with my arm going numb and my hand freezing with the rainwater, I was reminded of it. I have so many aspirations and plans, but no way of knowing it'll all come true. I might just be hoping for too much. Like Gatsby.

So I guess I'm trying to say that I get where he's coming from, I sympathise with Gatsby and I'm hoping my Daisy Buchanan really is my transition and Starfleet Brighton Uni.