The Grey Music

Why does rain, which depresses some people, make me feel like my soul is being watered? Why does rain make me feel as I'm being renewed?

Maybe I'm a ficus, in some botanical Matrix, dreaming of being a human. Probably not, though.

Sometimes, I think it is just that I like changes of pace. I never understood how people could complain about a rainy day after a string of sunny days. Don't they get tired of the sun?

I'm very sensitive to change, too. It's one reason I think I am not very good at picking out musical instruments. I react to so favorably, sometimes, to any change in sound that I forget to evaluate the quality of the change...maybe it is the general change in the sound of the day.

I don't think those are the only things, though; it can't just be a change of pace or sound that makes me feel so "right" when it rains.

It might be the same as with snow -- a kind of relief for an overactive brain, when the colors become minimized in the world. It helps my mind to become more quiet...the way music does. Speaking of music, the white noise tremolo of the rainfall serves the same purpose. It quiets me inside.

Time to open the windows and take in the grey music.

Childe Hassam

Rain, rain, don't go away...

The other day, while I was at work, a summer storm rolled in -- the kind of rain that creates an instant lake wherever there is open space; the kind of rain that pounds like millions of tinfoil feet on roads and roofs. The sky went nearly black.

The kids are done school for the year. I spend my days in the old building where I have an office made of real plaster walls. There is a peace in school with the kids gone. Sure, things are better with them around, because I get to teach, but the pressure level seriously decreases when the halls are silent.

Monet -- "Morning in the Rain on the Seine."

I spend my days with no tie on. (I despise wearing a tie. "Despise" is not a strong enough word, unless accompanied by an expletive, the likes of which I try to avoid on this blog.) And, tieless, I work on scheduling issues some of the time. The rest of the time, I prepare and study for the classes of the coming year. This year, it is advanced English and "College Composition."

I have a separate table I use for my teaching work (I feel like the purity and the creativity of my teaching will be somehow "infected" if I set the associated materials on my administrative desk) and I was sitting there absorbed in a poem by Stephen Dunn when the deluge started. I went to the window to watch, Dunn still playing in my head like underscore.