Tag: rain

Writing Practice 6/22/2019

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Aware…

Aware of a feeling of pressure on my buttocks, the pressure of the seat below holding me up so I do not collapse to the floor. Aware that this same pressure would arise if there were no chair, and I were to be held up, floating a thousand miles above the center of gravity, by the Earth’s surface. Aware that this is an existential crisis without end, for, in removing one surface, I simply follow the deeper pull to be felt, to fall inexorably towards some other center of gravity, to tumble and sink through the reaches of space to meet not the Earth but the Sun, then not the Sun but the Black Hole in the middle of the galaxy, then not even that but the blackest depression holding it all together.

Aware of the sounds of excitement, and of studiousness, and of inquisition and learning coming to my ears form a multitude of directions, even dimensions. Two directions make a dimension, yes? How many dimensions make a space? Where do the definitions end? How many more layers might there be beyond us, and this, and you, and me?

Aware of a slight dampness in my shorts, and across the chest of my shirt, from where I did two unusual exercises this morning; One, I sat on a wet(ish) seat in my car, and to, I crossed that same chest with a wet(ish), damp, rather, seat belt. Both were the residue of my prior engagement with the vehicle, earlier int he day. I had attended a bicycle ride, which turned into a shower on wheels, due to the downpour that shifted its path from the predictions, and chose to pursue us fifty or so cyclists, simply hoping to enjoy the overcast experience. But when Zeus woke up, and began targeting us once again with jagged lightning, launched playfully (for him), yet dangerously (for us) from his divine grasp, to jag and tumble and streak down from the Cumulus House to the waiting earth, well, we decided He had sufficiently scared us, and rightfully so, turned to head home. Thus, I captured approximately half of one of Minnesota’s finger lakes in my shoes, socks, shorts, and t-shirt, and, having no magic Shammey to soak up more than its weight in liquid, was forced to improvise by leaving deposits of clean, refreshing liquid all over the interior of my vehicle; on the seat, dripped into the door well, squilched onto the backside of the seatbelt, to be discovered later like some kind of poisoned, cursed treasure that, instead of blessing me, becomes a kind of burden, leaving its stain and stench and taint upon the remainder of all my day, for as long as that leftover residue chooses to remain.

Aware of my own throat, and a feeling of thirst; aware that my stomach is not hungry, but there is a corresponding desire to eat. Why? What sets off such a need? A want? A preference? For it cannot be need – I have eaten at least half of all the calories I will likely require for homeostasis today already, in but these few hours I have been awake and moving. So what is it, then? Routine? Social custom? Boredom? I suspect boredom. I suspect that, were I to decide to engage my mind, my spirit, my body in a stimulating, engrossing activity, or book, or conversation, I would forget all about that wisp of a hint of a desire, to eat, simply out of “nothing-to-do-itis”. I should put that reason for eating out of my head. I should abandon that thought entirely. I should cut out, lobotomise, incise from my brain forever, that part of me which has such a thought. That would be drastic, but effective, and permanent, and complete, if I could it it out like a cancer. My fear ,though, is that it – this thought, this desire, this illness to eat when bored – is not so much a contained space, or object, like a tumor, or a lesion, but, rather, it is a distributed process – a parallelism spread out across many spaces in my mind, across the hippocampus and the cerebellum and the pituitary and the thyroid, and, were I to attempt to get all of it, were I to be successful [illegible………………..][illegible…………………..][illegible………………………] leaving me both unchanged, and unfortunately, damaged in all my other actions and affects. [illegible………….]

Aware that now my pen has run dry.

Writing Practice – 1/15/18 – Describe how the rain smells to you:

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Describe how the rain smells to you:

The rain smells like washed grass. It smells like renewal and refreshment. Rain smells like the stirring up of old trail leaves when you’re out on a bike and the clouds have rolled in and the fat, warm drops bombard the detritus composting on the side of the trail, kicking up a dust of smell like regeneration.

The rain snails like opportunity – the chance to get out of the safety and comfort, the security of a house, a roof, walls, to walk through a field, the water landing haphazard on my shoulders, arms, [illegible], feeling little ploshes of backsplash off my cheeks onto my eyes, making me squint, making me raise a hand to wipe my eyes, stretching a smile across my face as I appreciate the connections between myself, here in this field, open, inviting, interested, connected between myself and voles and the ravens and the snails who live like this, who do not hide from nature, who do not hide from this nature, from the natural experience they have symbioted through for the past million years, they do not avoid the past, where they came from, where they were, who their ancestors were, they turn in to those ancient memories imprinted into their mind and into their psyche and into their instincts, they do not avoid it out of fear or weakness or some misguided desire for comfort, for peace, for ease.

I avoided those things, I avoided real, I avoided nature, I avoided my heritage, for so long, for TOO long, until this moment, until this image came down from the sky, a divine, heavenly blessing of reality, a grace, a perfection of experience, a true picture as simple of the way I used to be, of the way we all used to live, and I appreciate it, I revel in it, I glory in it. To be myself in the harmony, the resonance between myself and the world, I cannot but touch god through its raindrop tendrils. I feel a bond between us and though this will last, not forever, but at least as long as I desire, until I break, until I release, until I disappear away from this perfection back into the obscurity of security and safety, so I will revel in that while at the same time missing this, mourning this, wishing this, that I must release back to the sky.