Chrysalis [ 04. It's Raining Outside -- and Inside ]

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Alphonse is a ghost.
He appears and disappears as he likes. Come to think about it, I've never seen him in the university grounds. Sometimes it's as if he's transparent. There, but not there.
Sometimes I would not see him for a few weeks. "Where did you go?" I would ask, but in response he would mumble something inaudible. Transparent words. I never press the issue, but somehow I could sense the change in him after such disappearances. He is more talkative. But the kind of talkative that is sadder; like a cover, a distraction from the cause of the sadness itself. This repeated quite frequently.
Repetition.
I don't like the sound of it; its meaning, either. Rinse, lather, repeat. Like you are stuck in a vicious cycle, a never-ending loop, a snake eating its own tail, a downward spiral into oblivion.
This happened to me quite a few times: sometimes you consider a word, repeat it several times, say it aloud, spell it out on a paper, dissecting the syllables. Suddenly the word loses its meaning; suddenly the word becomes foreign; suddenly it is disjointed from the rest of the knowledge inside the head.
Isn't it ironic? Maybe you intend to repeat the word endlessly, its variations, visiting every possible meaning, considering every nuance, like Edgar and his bastardy soliloquy. But in the end the meaning is exhausted, the meaning is thrown into nothingness -- after that, nihil ex nihilo fit, nothing comes out of nothing, my fair Cordelia, so speak it again, again, again, spiralling to the selfsame nought.
Like a droplet of rain, coming down, coming up, stuck in the eternal cycle. "But, Jake," Alphonse would say, in a manner that always tries to neutralise my dour philosophy, "Every droplet of water is different, just like every snowflake is."
"As a big drop of rainwater condenses from the cloud, it plunges down. When air resistance is so great due to downward acceleration, the drop bursts into numerous droplets. The explosion of this water bomb goes to every which way. Jake, the water may be stuck into an eternal cycle. But it's not grumbling. Once in a while it goes parachuting. It must be feeling really happy."
I chuckled. As usual, I'm no match for Alphonse.
As I'm looking out of the window, it started to rain lightly. A runner ran past, droplets off his back, like a choreographed slow motion; like a dancer, gracefully, solemnly.
A boy and an old lady on a bench. A fountain nearby. The lady put down her newspaper and took off her glasses; something must have been caught in her eyes. The boy had his cheeks on his knees, shivering? The downpour was getting heavier. But the pair on the bench stayed, perhaps, it was not very clear, my vision obscured by layers of rainwater curtains.
I closed my windows.