how about this weather?!

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Farmers and meteorologists may take a serious interest, but for the rest of us, I have a hunch that the weather is just about the most safe-sex way of talking-without-saying-anything that exists.

"Nice day!"

"Lousy weather!"

"If only the heat would let up!"

As a fragment of human intercourse, the weather is probably first in line when it comes to producing no progeny. Weather is a tail-wagger, expressing connection without running the risk of the deeper waters of human passion or understanding. No fuses are lit and the ensuing interaction is comfortable and comforting: Thank God! -- I don't have to think or emote ... I can just wag my tail and you can wag back ... and there is something as fitting as it is mindless about the whole transaction: Finally, there is something about which I don't have to and in fact can't DO/THINK/BELIEVE/CORRECT anything. Ahhhhh.

Yes, I can whine or extol, but it's just a pastime.

If I had to guess, I guess I'd guess that the weather with its attendant conversational trinkets is a good template -- something that deserves a wider reflection. How many other topics may seem significantly different from meteorological tail-wagging and yet ... and yet ... are really not much more than tail-wagging in their own right? I can think and emote, laugh and cry, philosophize or be a bigot and yet in the end, what is simply is.

Sitting on the porch this morning, watching the rain fall and listening to the thunder rumble, I felt a small flicker of delight: In a summer season when television offers up endless re-runs of programs presented in the past, the good thing about the weather was that it was always fresh, always new, always wagging its tail.

Always.

And to top it all off -- woo-hoo! -- the weather doesn't run ads.

How's that for a mindless observation?
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