The Rain Came

 
Finally, after several months without a drop of rain, we get a whole day, and more promised.  The air is tangible again.  The sunflowers, that yesterday, seemed broken with age, are standing up straight.  We are always glad for one more day of sun in the Northwest, where fall and winter become a single memory of cold feet, the flapping of windshield wipers, and hidden dangers of footfalls into puddles or the squelch of mud.  Unlike other climates,here, there is the rainy season and the solid sun of summer and little in between. 

Mid October and my new early morning routine is darkness.  I cannot stop myself from waking earlier and earlier, my head roaring with questions.  The inquiry is all details of work, which defy interest for anyone else, but have become symbolic of everything else.  It does not matter what this job is about, only that I find a way to wrestle it into meaning.  I realize now that whatever we do, it is simply an expression of  ourselves and what we believe we are. 

Inevitably, concentration on one thing neglects others.  I have always had a hard time choosing what to let go.  Even now, I can't tell you anything I would willingly give up in my panoply of interests.  But the trivial tasks of cooking and cleaning and trying to perfect home economics take a back seat to the long commute of work.  I do not suffer from lack of nutrition; indeed, vegetables are the only craving that cannot be satisfied wherever I happen to be. So I chop and saute and consume strange combinations of leafy crunchy things and call it dinner. 

I hate how life rushes by, and I am barely able to find a high point to look back upon it.  But I love that headlong, headfull hunger to fill up on everything around me, to consume the moment, even if it shoves me faster toward the full stop.