Rainy Day Thoughts

It's raining outside and I'm supposed to be working on interrogatories. It's raining in that all day, pillowy grey blanket way. It's raining in that cleansing, awakening way. It's raining in that taste-touch-smell even through the windowpane way. When the snow is falling, when the sun is shining, I can work productively. But it's raining and I want to go on a lonely in a romantic way walk.

I'd forgotten, somehow, the hibernation process of winter. I'd forgotten the sleepiness, the quiet, and the cabin fever. But mostly I'd forgotten how numb it can feel. White sheets were pulled over the furniture and suddenly it was all cold, muffled, and untouchable. During those months, I craved color with every bit of me. Pulling out ankara fabrics and Mali outfits for a presentation, my eyes roamed the patterns, gulping down the loud, vibrant inks. I lifted one to my nose expecting - what? That it would be imbued with the past? It smelled only of dust but I still traced the designs lovingly, lost in the memories of color.

I found myself somehow angry at Iowa (do I say home still? I struggle with the restrictions of that word) for being what I had designated as numb. Having skipped out on winters for the last few years, the white and the grey grated on my nerves, as did the quiet. And while I re-acquainted myself with winter, I forgot that the same monotone slumber exists elsewhere. I forgot the stretched out weeks of hot season in Mali, passed in listless half-sleep, unable to function with bones not frozen and breakable but melted and rubbery.  I forgot how much I came to hate all of the brown, the dust covered world extending past the horizon. In my mind, Africa is in technicolor, the women in their local outfits, carrying bright plastic buckets of produce. I simplify too much.

The rain, for me, reawakens the spirit, opening the earth to another cycle. It also tends to lend itself to self-explorations and discovery. Shifting out of hibernation, listening to the rain, I chide myself for my own nostalgia and over-simplification. It's easy for me to look back and think it was better then. It's easy for me to tell myself I would be more active, more appreciative of the world around me if only I weren't in Iowa. The absurdity of my own excuses and pretension annoys me. I ought to put a moratorium on my own long-distance travel, ban myself from planes until I've learned to enjoy exploring the world within an easy distance. But I've already bought my ticket to Italy and it would be a shame for it to go to waste.

Peace & Love
Elyse