God is in the machine, god is in the rain

Did you ever smell the rain - The humidity in the air?
Did you ever feel the pain - Depending on what you will dare?

Sometime this morning, it rained. James liked the sound of the rain.

Because radiomancy is the only faith I practice right now, I turned the shuffle on while I stomped the pavement with that sweet smell of cold water and hot concrete filling my nose. There was Funker Vogt's "Date of Expiration" -

Great expectations
But the end is so near
A strange iteration
And soon it starts again

Then it was Grendel all the way down, screaming songs, and I kept going until the pain in my feet was closer to the pain in my chest. The only way out is through.

visitation

I went to the visitation at the funeral home. It rained today, hard and cold. Matt told me it was because we were so full of sorrow. On Mopac, there was no traffic at all which was was eerie and strange for 5:30pm on a week day. I only smoked one cigarette, on the way home.

There was an open casket, which shocked me. I figured whatever happened to him in the accident would have meant this was not possible. Someone did smash into him going 90 miles an hour and it killed him after all. You could see the bruising to his face, under the tricks of the undertakers. I wish in some ways that I hadn't looked. It was him and it wasn't at the same time, but it was enough like him that I felt a bit sick. I thought at the end that my knees might give out beneath me.

His wife hugged me and was kinder than I know what to say about. No one there from my past recognized me. In the slide show playing on loop, I recognized all the pictures from his teenage years. I was present when every one of them was taken, so many shots from those lost weekends we stayed at his father's apartment being goofy, ridiculous kids.

This is so goddamn hard. It hurts. I'm so full of rage and despair. The utter waste of it, the futility and randomness behind what happened to him have sent my brain into a spiral that's hard to back out of. In the car on the way home, I just screamed. I go between not wanting to speak or do anything to feeling so restless and jagged that I feel like I'm going to explode if I don't move.

I can tell my brain is treading the edge of a not rational place. I'm thinking about taking something so I can sleep because I'm afraid of being up all night losing it in the dark. The actual funeral is tomorrow. I don't want to go, in some ways. But I have to go. I remember when our friend killed himself back in high school, James and I sitting in the back row at the service. It was outdoors and it was sunny and hot and we were both wearing black tshirts. I never thought I would be sitting at his services like this.

Oh James. I'm so fucking sad and angry and its not fucking fair that you're dead. You should be here.

I found this LJ entry I wrote about James eleven years ago.