Writing the Rain

A desk by the window, a journal to write in, these are the tools, the places where I live my life. I live in my mind. I live on paper. I live on the computer screen. Once in a while I live in the world where the people pass by me on the street.

Today it is raining.

People say they are glad it isn’t snow. The streets are wet. They are shiny under the lights of the city. The drops are small and soft on the windows, in the air floating downward They surround the city lamps with a swarm of wet dot. The lamps shed a glow of watery illumination that makes the air glisten as if the lights were dressed for a formal occasion, as if they were debutantes coming out at a ball. Yet, most people don’t see. They don’t see the magic of it all, the illusion right above them.

Most folks see only the cause for umbrellas and taxis. Most folks feel only the wet falling on their hair, on new-polished shoes, and their faces. Most folks are worried, are busy, are in a hurry. They're preoccupied with the human-made side of life. They see the rain as blocking their view, slowing their pace, and generally in their way.

I see the rain as a shower, a powerful, graceful invitation to refresh the view, a chance to renew my emotional state, my imagination. I see the healing, the good feelings of the rain coming down. I know the growing that will be happening. When the wildflowers drink it in, they will be coming up, up, up. I picture the meadows lush and green and filled with the joy and color of nature, the nature of wonder.

I don’t mind the drops that cling. I don’t mind my bad hair. I don’t notice as I let my mind wander in between tiny drops of rain, riding the currents of clean, wet air from here to everywhere.

The rain is there outside my window and inside my soul. When I’m outside my window too, I feel it all around, inside me, and on me. I don’t need an umbrella. I’m part of nature.

I’ve been wet before.

−me strauss Letting me be