rain stories

Faces Coming Out Of the Rain

NSP Meditations, Of Walking in Rain , , , , , , , ,

Ray Bradbury wrote a book called The Day it Rained Forever. How come it took me this long to discover that? Rain means misery for dogs in animal shelters; volunteers to walk them won’t show up. I do. Rain worsens clearcuts, but that’s not rain’s fault. Rain splits; the sun cracks. A woman standing in brilliant sunshine outside a grocery store screamed terrible hateful words into her phone. Her face was pinched and red. Had it been raining, no such screaming would have occurred. Think of all the terrible hateful conversations rain aborts for screamers into their phones. The world is so much better without these words screamed in public for everyone to hear. A therapist asked me about loneliness and implied that willful cultivation of solitude makes someone emotionally sick. I said I wasn’t lonely, I have rain. It did not go over well. It rained right past him. A country song called “Rocking to the Rhythm of the Rain” played on country radio. It was sung by a female artist unknown to me and it sounded phony. Now “Rainin’” by Rosanne Cash, that’s real rain country song with real tasty rain guitar licks. It occurs to me that I am currently writing about dogs in precisely the same manner I write about rain. So I guess my dog book will be a rain book too. Rain has a ramshackle quality to it and I love the word “ramshackle.” Another word I love is “raiment.” It has nothing to do with rain but I have provided raiment to homeless men in need of staying dry in rain. I miss several people with “rain” in their names, literally or almost anagram. I wonder if anyone in the world is named Drizzle? I know there many Mistys out there although Misty is an old name and nearly extinct. I am reading a Brazilian detective novel called The Silence of the Rain, and the author is perfunctory with his rain in Rio. I have lost so many of the great rain people in my life. Will new ones emerge? I met an old man walking down a road. He told me, “I can hear the trees howling for rain.”

Jim Morrison wrote and sang: When you’re strange/ Faces come out of the rain

I recently heard this line, in the car, on the radio, in mono, in the middle of strange nowhere, while it was raining, hard, lamented faces were coming at me, and the line was so incredible that I nearly had to pull over and contemplate it. I cannot believe I never considered this line for the rain book or my faces-themed writing workshop! What are the strange faces that come out of the rain? What a writing prompt. Write on it! See what transpires listening to AM radio?

Jim, I apologize for disparaging you in my rain book. You were a rare, almost unprecedented man of the sun…and rain. That is a rare thing indeed. And of course, it probably killed you.

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Random Rainy Thoughts

NSP Meditations, Of Walking in Rain , , , , , ,

Rain seeps into my docile. It tickles and trickles in through invisible seams. I need to caulk and recaulk. I write this while sipping a black beer. I wish I had some good old country music playing. I am living a good country song right about now. I am wearing a Western shirt as I write this. Can you have a black beer in a country song?

There are so many things I should be writing about but in recent weeks I haven’t been writing about them. The plan was to sequester myself in a remote place in my mind and write something that could potentially earn me a living. Writing to fend off starvation was the working editorial urgency.

Instead I am writing on: biscuits and gravy, dogs, old dogs, rain, Christmas craft fairs, clearcuts, culverts, Oregon tavern age life, ferns, watersheds, Port Orford, books no one reads, Sometimes a Great Notion, poetry, love, rivers, rain, RV parks, firewood. I can’t seem to commit to what should be written and perhaps therein lies the key to what is important to write.

I am also reading books and pamphlets that no one reads anymore. I find them everywhere, abandoned, bargain bins, street libraries, dive bars, trash cans.

Strangers come out in the rain: a man hauling firewood; a woman running down the beach in absurd fashion; an old timer mining for gold; a bartender reading self-books written where the sun perpetually shines, written by authors who all sport tans; a woman selling wood burnings for Christmas tree decorations made from wood scavenged from construction sites; a man playing pool with a hustler’s past mindset, but not the skill; two men who knock off from roofing to drink in the afternoon.

I walked a dog in rain the other day, a crazy mutt the color of apple brandy. He was more Mexican jumping bean than dog and he delighted me with his antics and the little break of skin on my hand from his treat-eating savagery.

It is hard to believe that Franz Kafka and Thomas Mann both wrote long short stories about dogs that barked with so much existentialism (human, not canine) that they often proved difficult to read.

But at least the dogs didn’t die at the end! (I think.) I can’t say the stories had happy endings, either. They just ended.

(If you found this post enjoyable, thought provoking or enlightening, please consider supporting a writer at work by making a financial contribution to this blog or by purchasing an NSP book.)