Visceral | Brynn Bowthorpe

I thought that the rainstorm the other day was completely beautiful, except for one thing:

While enjoying the cleansing rain and walking back from class, I thought nothing of the construction work going on outside of my building. I admired the small dots of wet on the sidewalk and basked in the fresh scent. To save effort, I decided to cut across the grass. This was my mistake. With the rain and the construction work combined, the grass had become saturated and squishy. When I surfaced back on the sidewalk, my pants were wet to my shins and my shoes were caked in mud and wet stucco. The wet pants I can handle, and I am usually not gossed out by mud, but this dirt is the reddish brown clay sand dirt native to southern Utah, and once you step in it-- your shoes are never the same, its like stepping in dog poop. And the sound it makes when trying to "walk it off" -- or scrape it off on the sidewalk: a nausiating scratching squelching! Its disgusting and frusturating.

On the other hand, though-- once I got back up to my apartment and cleaned off the mud, I looked out the window at where the workers keep their materials in the corner of the parking lot: a great wash of mud marinated the entire space, with a fair amount of wet dirt heaped in a hill. Despite what I had just been through with my shoes, a part of me wanted to run out there barefoot and squish the mud through my toes, throw mud-balls at my roommates, and laugh at the drenching rain. Luckily, I restrained myself.