Sunday Reflections: For the rain, it raineth everyday...

(from http://israelity.com)

I've been waiting for this rain for some time now... perhaps with the death of Mister John, it's odd to watch the happy, clear elements... How could it be sunny and pleasant when my friend is gone?

It's quite a rain though... it's the kind of lightning that looks like daylight and the thunder is so hard that a car alarm in the neighborhood went off (twice). I love the sound of rain hitting the pavement. Though rain tends to aggravate my fibromyalgia symptoms, I find the sound relaxing...

So, as I reflect today, I'm thinking about other great rainy days...

I remember one beautiful fall season... I came down with a cold and confined myself to my room. Since I clearly had time to kill, I played all three Lord of the Rings movies back to back to the natural soundtrack of rain tapping on the dried, fallen leaves. The leaves were brightly colored that year, so even as the sun set, the light hitting the leaves glowed like a forest of fairies creating the perfect atmosphere on a day when I wanted to escape myself (and that runny nose).

I also remember walking through the streets of New York last summer. Without thinking to check the weather, we had stupidly walked out into the city without an umbrella. We weren't walking in Times Square... instead we took these quiet back roads on which the options of ducking under the shelter of a shop were few and FAR away. We finally found a bookstore... we were drenched head to soggy jeans... which are sticky and heavy against the skin when wet. Our feet squished in our shoes as we tried not to drip on the papers. The shop smelled of radiator heat which was welcome even in the intense warmth of summer. I came across some fun books I had never seen before... which always counts for a good afternoon, rain or shine!

My piano/voice teacher from grade school had a daughter a few years older than me named Ginger. I thought she was the coolest person on the planet and was stunned when she asked me to go out roller skating with her (Shut up! This was in the 80s!). I was at their house getting ready... Ginger was acting like the big sister I never had! She teased my hair, crimped it, and tied it up on top of my head like Madonna's hair in Holiday from the Like a Virgin tour. She picked out some of her own clothes to accessorize what I had brought. Did my make-up... turned me into an 80s, pop star princess. On our way out, I had to feel my way around the furniture. All the lights were out. When the lightning flashed, I saw the back of my teacher's head back-lit from scene out the window. She was taking the time to just sit there and watch the storm... and I was half-tempted to cancel my tour of coolness with Ginger and just sit with my teacher listening to the rain and blinking against the lightning.

One of maybe two of my favorite works by Shakespeare is Twelfth Night. My favorite character is the smart-mouthed Feste who both confounds and illuminates the facts to the other people in the play. In a decent film version, Feste is portrayed by the brilliant Ben Kingsley. They wrote him a little song derived from Shakespeare's words in the text called "For the rain, it raineth everyday..." (When that I was and a little tiny boy/ With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,/ A foolish thing was but a toy,/ For the rain it raineth every day...) The lyrics, as they go on, suggest that there's a bit of misery discending upon us everyday... but when you listen to the words, it makes it sound like that's not such a big deal... reminiscent of Elizabeth Bishop's The Art of Losing (The art of losin isn't hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster.)

Those are my rain thoughts for tonight... care to share yours?