Some Lines on Rain

Harder rain, please, to kill the sound of a crying dog on a chain.

From Here to Eternity contains arresting lines on Hawaii’s rainy season rains. But somehow I can’t relate.

A 90-inch year is possible this year. Past 90 and the weird turn pro. Past 100 and things fall apart.

In the past few days, I have talked only to rain and only to dogs walking in rain.

My best rain shoes sprung a leak.

I’m still gathering rain stories for the sequel to the rain book I will never write but am currently living.

I’d like to write about rain in a new way when I write my detective novel. Rain is always clichéd in crime fiction. I want to reverse that. I want it to provide fresh revelations and not just ablutions, either.

I wonder if anyone is reading my rain book at this very moment I am writing about rain.

I saw a woman on the beach waking in circles while rain came down in walls. Her car had Arkansas license plates. It is quite possible she was going mad or happy in Oregon Coast rain.

I faced down a harbor seal in rain.

I saw a three-ton piece of driftwood get thrown up into the sky while it rained. It could have have crushed a corrupt Congressional committee had they convened on the beach.

Rain assists in erosion. Erosion is such an interesting word. It sounds like what it is.

I keep expecting to read news that someone is going to take another run at filming Sometimes a Great Notion. Perhaps they would hire me as the rain consultant to the project. I’d get it right this time.

I am trying to think who had the most beautiful face in rain I have ever seen. There is a candidate from years ago on Nestucca Spit.

Rain can sting, the sun only burn. The stinging alerts; the burning hurts.

I recently met someone with a passion for Rilke who went to a cafe to wait for rain. That sounds exactly what Rilke might do.

Why doesn’t the predicted rapture come in rain instead of fire. I guess it already did with the flood myths that are part of every human culture.

I saw someone hitting tennis balls against a backboard in rain, with a wood racket, something I used to do all the time in my youth (listening to Earth Wind and Fire). It is a sight almost vanished from American culture. I think the “someone” was well over 70 years ago. Good strokes, especially that slice backhand.

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