Down, down, south, south. Highway 101 on a Sunday morning. A three-hour trip begins in rain, substantial rain, falling straight from the sky. No wind to move it like walls. I’ve got local radio on. Obscure stations coming in and out, playing equally obscure songs such as something by Maria Muldar I’ve never heard before. […]
Eight or nine days straight, three or four more forecast. Well, past mere accumulation of inches. Last night it was first a tickle on the roof, then a tap dance, then a torrent, then a gentle sweeping, then plopping until dawn. What variety! A true maestro-less orchestra fallen from the sky! I listened to it […]
Rain falls in a new existential place for me, as a new concrete era in my life begins. I see a man walking down the road, talking to himself. He seems incredibly agitated. He’s waving his arms in the air, his arms colliding with rain. I write from a forlorn coffee shop in a deserted […]
It’s one of those days when you must embrace record rain or surrender. You can walk into it, like I did earlier, and reconsider this and that. Rain is good for the act of reconsideration, an act of the heart and mind that feels like a lost American art these days. Doesn’t everyone want someone […]
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 […]
A sizable rain is falling as I write this in the early morning. No light yet. I say sizable, because that means we’ll talk about it later today as we adjust ourselves to rain and more rain. I have new rain shoes, magnificent Clark’s Wave Walkers, waterproof, brown, with suede, a perfect fit. Brand new […]
Rain hammers the roof. There is an army up there. It is that Ken Kesey Sometimes a Great Notion, Halloween rain. It transfixes and it tranquilizes; it whispers and it roars. I will probably venture forth into it this morning, in body and mind, and seek out my fellow rain addicts. We never meet, of […]
I took a walk in Friday rain, a morning walk, and thought about the blue REI raincoat I was wearing. I have owned it for 33 years and walked in rain on four continents with it. It is a trusted friend, much like the pea coat I have owned for 22 years. It is good […]
The dad decides his kids need to meet Hector, meet a gas station attendant, talk to a human being in public. He powers down all the windows and rain rips into the SVU, spraying the kids and their devices. There is a chorus of howls and protestations. One kid is on the verge of bawling. […]
An affluent dad pulls his SUV into a gas station. Inside the vehicle, his three children, ages 7, 9, 10, a boy, girl and in-between, fiddle on their phones and tablets while a movie plays on a monitor. It’s raining like hell outside. The dad waits for an attendant to emerge from the store to […]