Classical Music is on the Radio During Flash Flood
The flood is a river between the years. At least that’s how I make sense of it. Two years ago it flooded just like this. In a flood on an unbearably hot day there’s water everywhere but you can’t swim in it. Two out of the three roads home are impassable. The only possible path is the longest way. The windows are down. You are listening to classical music on the radio because while you don’t understand it, there are moments when something happens. Many people play different sounds at once. Through the sound’s company, your road changes, and your breathing changes. Sudden vision of a room full of fancy people who love this. All of their bodies are pointed towards a stage. They are dressed up, their babies are in bed. It has been a nice night. In my imagination then the room is filled with sound and that’s the only thing going on. Thoughts are clear besides this sound. It sounds like many people working together to change some quality about the room.
On the radio, the commentator only names the conductor and the philharmonic or the symphony or whatever. I’ve never seen a symphony play within a room, but I hear it all the time within my car. Within my imagination inside my car, I build stories of how these sounds happened.
Right before the flash flood happened yesterday, I was pulling old lettuces and weeds out of a bed at the farm. My coworker A asked me, “What do you want to do if it starts to rain?” I said, “Oh I don’t know, I’m happy to get wet.” He said, “I’m not getting wet, I have errands to do after this!”
The soil was like sand. I coughed from the dirt and wiped my hands and pulled up plants. The way I just wrote that last sentence is by means of an ancient rhetorical device called “hysteron proteron” where the order of events is reversed, the sentence begins with the end. So many different ways to share a thought. The most impactful just get you to where I’ve gone…
…(so you can keep going).
When A felt a drop, we ran to a high tunnel. We ran on grass and passed the blueberries and grapevines. The grapes are green and hard right now because they aren’t ripe yet. The blueberries are fat and a great color, as you might imagine.
As I remember it, when we got into the tunnel, the air was quite cool because there were lots of clouds above us. The tunnel was full of tall tomato plants. We began pruning tomatoes as quickly as possible. We pruned a part of the plant called a “sucker.” A sucker is a physical manifestation of a tangential thought. It grows between the stalk and the leaves. It grows straight up, and is a clone of the original plant, and as such is in competition with it. While we pruned, A and I were talking about old jobs we’ve had. He said, “If I had left a year earlier, I would have had much nicer things to say about it now.” I told him, “I’ve never thought of it that way.” Things are not so simply good or bad, but temporally the impact of the end colors the remembering.
Then, if the rain was an orchestra and the roof was its instrument, the song became so loud that A and I couldn’t keep talking. It was so loud. It was so loud that four to six inches of water came down in a matter of minutes. Although it was a peaceful sound, it made matters difficult. But if I end the story here, the sound of the rain would be like any piece of music that I love. However, I am going to keep writing. Pretty quickly the rain did stop. The clouds blew away and the temperature inside the high tunnel rose ten degrees in a minute or two. My hands were stained by tomato vines and covered in sweat.
On the drive home, I listened to someone’s 9th something. I employed my imagination and watched the audience at a symphony hall while I also watched the wet road.
I placed paste tomatoes and coriander seeds on the passenger seat. The coriander was glowing a color between green and gold. When a color is in transition, scientists say that it glows. This time of year is when colors are transitioning. Every year in late July I put these ingredients beside me in the car to bring home from the farm. I also recently realized that if I need her around, there’s a girl sitting in the passenger seat remembering me. I know she’s there because
I am sitting in the passenger seat. There is a girl driving a sporty little two door over flooded roads. She has pulled over and is playing classical music out her car stereo for a group of wet cows. The cows are lying down. She doesn’t know I’m there but I’m there. I see that the cows are beautiful but the girl can’t quite tell yet. I am holding the coriander and tomatoes carefully in my lap. As if the place of memory is literally there, where you think it is. Not a secret spot in the body or mind but in the place of the time. When I remember, I am returning as a guest. In more loving moments, I return as a companion.
I remember yesterday two roads home were flooded and one was not. I took the longer route for this reason. Cars can stall and people can die and houses can wash away in water like this. This will happen with greater frequency until perhaps
The music on the radio made me think simultaneously of everyone playing and everyone listening. I slowly returned home. I showered, drank some water, and lay in bed beside the man I love. I showed him my tomato-stained fingers. He said, “maybe try putting some olive oil on your hands, maybe that will get it off.”
So I stood over the kitchen sink and poured a handful of oil into my hand. I shook hands with myself first professionally, and then sensually, and then erotically until my hands were hot. My hands were smooth and silken-looking beneath the kitchen light. I wiped the oil off by rubbing it all over my arms, but the stain did not come off my fingers. I got back in bed and talked for a while about fruits and the progression of their seasons. I listed strawberry, black raspberry, blueberry, raspberry, blackberry, peach, grape. It is blueberry season now. I’ve waited so long and so quickly it’ll be over. I think this again, again, again.
My passenger seat, July 2025:
My passenger seat, July 2022:
