Every now and then the sound of rain and road brings me to a place I have long forgotten. I remember lying in my bunk, hearing the cars go by, seeing their lights slide around my bedroom walls, wondering about their world, safe in mine. A child’s comfort. The appeal of the rain is in its simplicity – the sounds, the smells, the peaceful insistence. Like the snow, or the river, it just keeps coming and coming – threatening, perhaps – but also perfectly lovely even in violence. To stand in the rain, face to the gale, eyes closed, is a phenomenal feeling. All power and submission; meaningful yet insignificant, we feel the place of man -- somewhere between heaven and earth, it would seem. We haven't the raw power of the beast nor the beauty of the heavens, yet there is something there that calls to us and bids us take a place among them. Can we ever? Can we fall gently like the rain or howl like the wind, or do we only dream of such perfection? To be like the rain -- to fall and never hurt -- that would be a blessing; and yet I wonder: perhaps we are like the rain. Must we always fall from such heights to shatter into a million pieces, only to rise again for another fall? But maybe too, like the rain, our fall can be a blessing, for in breaking ourselves what beauty can blossom out of the muck, if even a single flower? Perhaps some day we will be able to stop falling, to stop breaking. Perhaps some day we can join the heavens and not have come down again. A child’s comfort, safe and full of wonder.
01-08-07
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