Rain and a Nativity Scene

Rain tickles the roof of my new domicile. No, it tap dances like Fred Astaire. No, it is jazz played with brushes in a smoky New York club in the 1950s.

When rain falls, it often leads writer to drown themselves(but never Ken Kesey) in preciousness and pretension. I know a little something about that and have tried to amputate it in recent years. It’s so hard to cut off your own arm.

Hark! I hear a sound on the roof. It is the rat scratching around, trying to gain entry into my domicile via a disused vent. The last three nights he has clanged the vent at exactly 3:00 a.m., almost like tolling a bell! We have a little battle going on, but I will not employ lethal methods. I began the negotiations the other night and they seem to be going well.

The Christmas decorations are up and beaverwood accented by white twinkle lights has never looked so holy. It compares favorably to the plastic Nativity scene down the dead-end road where wind has toppled the three wise men, Joseph, the virgin Mary, baby Jesus, farm animals and a penguin wearing a scarf into uncompromising positions. It is perhaps the most forlorn, debauched, but also strangely moving Nativity scene I have ever witnessed. All it needs to cross into legend are elves, angels and a Grinch with a whip.

The rain is picking up, scatter shot in movement, like it can’t decide where it wants to fall. Now the sound turns to to typewriter, an IBM Selectric.