Cold Showers

It has rained for another twelve consecutive hours. Continual drizzle, punctuated by moments of storm. The air is filled with wet, and at times like this, I think of the Gulf Stream.

I also think of how important cold showers are in the bigger picture of things. There are times when cold showers are just shocks to the system without much real use. But there are times when they are lovely episodes in a brassy and overheated day.

The times ahead feel interesting. Cold showers brace you for such events.

Laughter

It is raining this morning, raining with dark grey sheets in a scudding roil of the sky. Yet somewhere out there some cheerful bird is improvising themes on his daily chweet-chweet tune. It's not flooding yet, and there is much to laugh about.

One of the things I am laughing at is the idea of the decline and fall and rising again of China. When people talk about such things, they should take the long historical view. China has always been on the rise. Only in the roughly 200 years of most of the 19th and 20th centuries has it not quite been its usual self.

Yes, it's not flooding yet. But the deluge will come. Hahahaha...

Precipitation

It falls, and that is all it does. Anything that falls out of nowhere, as if off a cliff, out of a window, down from the sky — this is precipitation. And today, coming after the parching waves of sulfur dioxide and ash, the rain is a very welcome guest. This, this, it whispers, is the promise of love.

Do you remember what it was like to sit, not in a fine and private place, but in the open — on the bleachers, in the canteen, at the ceremonial staircase — and do nothing but talk to someone who was great company? I've had a few moments like that, spots of calm precipitation in the midst of a wearying drought.

If I had to think of geographical metaphors for the company I keep, I would stick with Isaiah: Each man shall be a shelter from the wind and a refuge from the storm, a stream of water in the desert and the shadow of a mighty rock within a thirsty land. My friends have been in every case at least one of these things, if not all — they have been protectors of my back and flanks, shields against adversity and suppliers of good things; they have been rallying points and sources of revival to me.

The one blessing I see that is yet to come, and will yet be given to me, is the blessing of arrows in a warrior's hand. I woke up a few days ago with that vision. A voice tells me that the young people I have helped along the way might be thus, a strong and unexpected resource in a time of strife.

But for now, the rain, the rain is falling.

Rainfall

Today something occurred to me that never quite occurred to me before. Rain can't possibly fall straight down. It just appears to do that, but every drop is spinning, smearing, stretching, straining, buffeted by wind and the movement of the earth and the intervention of objects. If rain were to fall straight down, it would look and feel rather odd.

Light

It is midnight and there is light everywhere in the mineral fragrance of the rain.

Thunderbird

There is the sound of rain. It begins easily, like the feathers of a sleeping swan rise slightly in the changing air. In the night, all the humours of the day are muted; clashing choler and strident sangue are replaced by melancholy and phlegm. Here we stand, watching the thunderbird.

It is young, although very old. It comes to us from the heart of dreams, the navel of creation. It is so dark that it is silver against the night, because it is blacker than any darkness. It makes a hole in the tissue of reality. Every feather is a frisson of electricity woven into the tapestry of the clouds.

Nobody else feels the rain yet, because nobody else has made themselves deliberately aware of the tiny droplets beginning to form around particles in the upper air. Like angels furling their wings, they begin to fall, too small to dictate where they will land. A horde of them descend through atmosphere, a host.

The air is getting drier and wetter at the same time. It is that season of the heart, when you do not realise that both things happen, and all things happen at once.

We await the thunderbird.

Rainfall Feedings

This is going to be an odd post. I have to say that all these people are legally imaginary but mythopoetically real. You can ask them about it if you want to, and if you are genuine enough. All events really happened, but if you are like Trivandrum (see below) and cannot leave well enough alone, you know they might not have quite happened the way they are described.

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The average rainfall in Eden is zero. There is no rain at all, just a mist which rises in the night and waters the land, disappearing in the dawn. Perhaps Eden no longer exists, in damned Mesopotamia or ruined Ceylon, and I should speak in the past tense. But even after Eden, no rain – the separated waters were a vault, an astrological crystal dome, an hieromancer's crystal sphere. But now, in this fallen world, it rains.

I am remembering one particular day. It might have been today, it might be tomorrow – it resonates of all the rainy days I've had. Consciousness was a heavy burden and perception worse. My percipience was like a leaf-blade, sharp on both edges, thin as paper and without a hilt. I cut myself badly on that deadly lamina. Everything was so acute that I almost felt my nerves telling each other that they would kill me if I hit the caffeine again within six hours.

I had several meals. The first was with the General. Nobody calls him that, of course, and a barking snort of derisory laughter would probably greet any attempt. But he looks like a general of the old and diplomatic kind, with a warmonger's taste balanced with a warrior's honour. He speaks at least four languages and teaches one, a dead waste of talent if I ever saw such. But who cares about him? Not his boss, who routinely hazards his career with a carelessly shouted phrase or two.

A shadow's heartbeat later, as we stewed over noodles and traded historical fragments, the Stork dropped in. Not the progenitive or paragenitive Stork of legend, but the tall and elegant one given to much whimsy and the occasional sly jibe at the ill-considered silliness of the time. Stork was in fine form. The friends appointed for morning-meal had decided not to show at the moment assigned. Stork preferred the company at our table, and I didn't mind.

Time passed and my irascibility was dispersed and dispensed across my long-suffering acolytes for a while.

Then was time for payback. Gnomus was always busy rubbing his diet (metaphorically, of course) in my face. So I tried behaving like him for a while. Along the way, we picked up a little audience and some victims. The god-daughter suffered silently and fairly not-so-unhappily as we plucked the balls from little boys with no common sense and set them aside on a rainy day. We were aiming for five, but the quality of the soccer fraternity produced three excellent samples.

God-daughter had experienced tragedy in Twelfth Night, which is unusual but not unheard-of. The play is second only to The Merchant of Venice in being misapprehended with consequent misfortune for all associated. We advised that tragedy should be left to goats, and left it at that. Very often, I wish that the young and prone-to-misfortune could be shielded somewhat from the consequences of others' awkward ideas. But that kind does not come out except by fasting and prayer.

Off again to chastise the acolytes. Not an excellent chastisement this time, for the second group were a hard-working bunch of toilers, affording sophisticated amusement but lacking the vim and pepper of the first (well, mostly). I spent some time in the adjoining room pretending not to eyelid a bat, and generally being odd.

And then it was lunch with excellent little slices of roast pork in rich stock and angel-hair pasta (I wanted fettucine, but no dice). There were two sub-sections of this meal: the first was with a bunch of the charming young men (who reminded me of the gang in our time) and the second was with the charming young ladies and two of the lads with the nice eyelashes. [Oh dear, I suppose at this point I must assert my heterosexuality once and for all just in case my (have I really written such an odd paragraph?) writing stirs aspersions and indignities are visited upon me.]

God-daughter was there, and also the Lioness. Romana, Trivandrum, and Angster (arbitrary names just for this particular post) were also there. Plenty of entertainingly mindless fun was had by all – games of 'confuse the compass' and 'which lad is the lady most like' were played. Sweet milky tea was imbibed while others consumed chunky chips and watched the words sail overhead. Gnomus was his usual capricious intelligent self, making copious scatological (sociological) notes in a little book. We had fun.

The sad part, of course, is that this might well have been the last hurrah. It must end soon. Perhaps it already has. It is a very fin-de-siécle feeling.

After that I and the Disciple went off to thrash the younger gentlemen at cards. Won handily. Not our finest hour, but a good time was had by all. Of course, no money exchanged hands. No hands exchanged money either.

What a day. So few of such pass our way, with equal measure of pain and pleasure and sadness and joy all rolled into a wet blanket of the kind Noah would have appreciated. I am happy for now.

Stormtroopers

tonight's rain infiltrated wings
of hydrogen-bonded commandos
descended in the darkness of things

the wind was ever their ally, just
sent them through narrow casements howling
a barrage of oxidative lust

they attacked across our window-panes
wreaked hell on roof tiles and bathroom floors
made incursions into the storm-drains

we slept through it all and into sun
day, the morning nuclear miracle
evaporated each and every one

in the morning the landscape appeared
fresh, the molecular infantry
mauled by massive firepower, cleared