The Weather

Posted March 5th, 2004 by Sean Williams

I think each person is born to a certain kind of environment that resonates with them. Something happens on a morning when you’re nine and while it happens, you smell that rich sweaty odor of Autumn in Oregon, and for the rest of your life that smell and that feeling will make you happy, regardless of where you feel it.

When I lived in Los Angeles, I was sad and scared and, honestly, pretty much drunk or high the whole time. I also chain smoked. But I had a group of gorgeous, amazing friends that used to stand outside and smoke with me.

Los Angeles at night is cold, made more so by the fact that you’ve spent the whole day warm and you’re only wearing a frickin’ t-shirt and your skin still has that hard nippled feel of sunburn. So, when you’re watching a movie with your buddies and you stop it every 45 minutes to go grab a cigarette, you end up huddling in a little group in the dry night-time cold.

I will always feel lovely about that weather. I can’t do it anymore, if I did it for one night I would be coughing up a lung.

Today, it was the weather that I most love. The sun blinking, struggling to get through the early Spring or late fall overcast sky, but it isn’t totally cold yet. And it doesn’t rain. It’s cool, it’s moist… honestly, it’s perfect conditions for getting an angry cold. If you walk around too much, like I did, your glasses will cover in mist, your sweatshirt will get wet and your hair curls up like crazy.

I don’t know if it’s Iowa, knowing that the humid ass horrible summer was ending for months or that the frigid fucking winter was ending for a while, or if it’s London or Virginia or what. I have no idea where the imprint happened, but when the weather gets moody like this, to me it feels erotic.

I walk around and breathe deep, huge gulping draughts of air and I just want to stay outside the whole time. Of course, that perfect romantic moment lasts for no time at all, the sun dips and it turns cold or the sun climbs and the mist burns off. But here in New York, that weather moment lasts for hours and hours.

Today was perfect for a little while. I loved it. I just fucking loved it.