Funeral is a band from Norway. They play doom metal of the most sorrowful morbidly pessimistic sort and it goes very well with the rain. This has been the first day in weeks i haven't been able to have my windows open and feel the cool wind on my face as i drive to work. Instead i watched a stream of water form at the edge of the window, flow down and then as i hit the highway gradually change it's direction to a horizontal path away from the traffic i should've been watching.
It was kind of nice actually, the stereo has a different sound when the windows are closed. The highs come in a little crisper revealing a bit more detail in the guitar tones and percussion. And as i arrived i walked slowly through the rain watching everyone with their umbrellas jog into the building as if the precipitation had been something much more threatening than rain. I like the rain too much to run through it. Had it been colder i may have quickened my step a bit, but it was a refreshing temperature, one that if i did actually get a chill it would be quickly remedied by a cup of coffee. It all seems so surreal though... Which leads into my main topic.

I watched a movie tonight called The Machinist. Christian Bale (my favorite actor) plays the main character. If you've never seen the film and are interested you should probably STOP READING NOW. There's a reoccurring scene in the film where Bale sits at an airport coffee shop and orders the same cup of coffee and piece of pie whenever he goes. While there he talks to the waitress, just chatting really; pleasant polite conversation. There are a lot of similar scenes in the movie. Well, it turns out that he had been silent the entire time. The character of the waitress was a character from his past that he had manifested dialog with. None of it was real and it reminded me too much of myself. All the times i've gone out to places alone and just sat with a beer. Sometimes there would be someone, but no one i could ever remember the name of or prove that they even exist. I pictured myself looking into a half empty bottle and cooking up something entertaining. I really don't have anything to show for the four months that i've been here other than a few personal possessions that i wouldn't terribly miss if they had vanished upon waking tomorrow.

I wouldn't be that startled if i woke up in Poughkeepsie tomorrow. It seems so insane, but this feels too much like a script. There are reoccurring images that send my mind directly to memories as if everything i have been experiencing in this place is a mixed up distorted collage of my life up until four months ago.

But, there are little things. People that i see on a regular basis. Their characters are too complex to have been a product of my imagination. This girl at the gym; she usually seems like she's trying so incredibly hard not to notice anything. Her head is always down on her walk to empty the trash that sits near the free weight area. But, tonight she was at the front desk and we exchanged both a greeting and a goodnight. Her voice is exactly as how i imagined it would be, although she put more charm into it than i was expecting, and she used eye contact in the most dramatic way. You know... with a pause, looking down at a piece of paper while she delivered the first few syllables then looking up slowly with a developing smile all to climax in an unimaginably kind gesture. That was nice and it's little things like that that are going to keep me from going completely insane.