An introvert’s dream

Today is rainy and raw. Roxy hates to go out in the rain, but I force her to walk anyway, and she repays me by smelling of wet dog all day.

Part of me prefers rainy days to the harsh brilliance of the March sun, when there is no greenery to temper the unremitting glare. A mix of sun and rain is best, of course–moderation is best in all things–but when a rainy day comes on the heels of several sunny days, the change comes almost as a relief.

Sunny days are extroverted and energetic: days to be busy and get things done. Rainy days are perfect for hunkering down at home and turning inward: an introvert’s dream. Sunny days are for socializing, rainy days are for solitude, and I know which I prefer.

I’m often more productive on rainy days, given the lack of social distractions. Reading a book on a sunny patio is one of my summer pleasures, but during winter-into-spring, I need to be inside at my desk, grading papers on my laptop.

Grading papers on a laptop feels downright cozy on rainy days: brew some tea, toss a blanket over the (wet) dog, and tackle the paper-piles you’ve been procrastinating.

 

Within the circle of your own umbrella

It’s a cold, rainy day–what started as sleet overnight has transitioned to rain, with strong winds. I brought my reverse umbrella with me when I went to the Zen Center this morning: not only does its inside-out design make it perfect for stepping into and out of cars, it holds up nicely against the wind, and its C-shaped handle hooks over one’s wrist, leaving one’s hands free.

On rainy days, there are far fewer pedestrians out and about. Before meditating at the Zen Center, I parked in Central and walked to Graffiti Alley and back, and there was hardly anyone on the streets: no panhandlers, cyclists, or passersby bustling with shopping bags. Many people stay home when it’s rainy, but if you own a good umbrella and a solid pair of boots, rain needn’t be an impediment. Instead, your umbrella gives you a heightened sense of privacy, like a superhero’s cloak. Stepping through and around puddles, you can peer from beneath your quiet canopy, seeing without being seen.

Umbrellas are often characterized as the domain of the old and odd, which is perhaps why I am so fond of mine. According to wilderness magazines and the ads that fill them, truly outdoorsy types venture forth in parkas and ponchos made from high-tech synthetics. When is the last time you saw an intrepid weather reporter facing a snowstorm or blizzard with an umbrella?

But Henry David Thoreau walked with an umbrella, and this points to the real reason for my own appreciation. You can’t climb a mountain or scale a cliff-face while holding an umbrella, and it’s all but impossible to run with one. But naturalists and flaneurs alike walk more deliberately than that: an umbrella, it turns out, is a perfect implement for saunterers. Forget about marching to the beat of a different drummer; strive to stride within the circle of your own umbrella.

 

April showers

Today is what the Irish call a soft day: gray and misty, with gauzy bands of drizzle wafting beneath an overcast sky. There is no need for umbrellas on soft days: a windbreaker and ball cap are all you need, along with an antsy dog who demands walking in all weather.

On soft days, Toivo and I have the streets, sidewalks, and aqueduct trail almost to ourselves. On our way to the place of pines this morning, we saw a distant border collie herding her owner toward the dog park; on the way back, we saw a woman walking a white Pomeranian that looked like a powder puff on a leash. Overhead, fish crows called and finches twittered, and underfoot, the needle-strewn trail was damp and spongy, as soft as fog.

They say that April showers bring May flowers, a saying that suggests spring rain is tolerable only if you focus on future beauty. But on a day like today, April showers are their own reward. After months of snow, mere rain cannot daunt us. After months of snow, any precipitation you don’t have to shovel is warmly welcomed.

 

Edenic

The past few days have been wet, with weather that alternates between mist, drizzle, and outright rain. This morning was foggy and damp, and even now the trees are still dripping with moisture.

Drippy spring days when you can almost hear the grass greening always remind me of Genesis 2, where God plants a garden “in the east, in Eden,” where “no plant had yet sprung up, for the Lord God had not sent rain on the earth.” Eden is a paradise because it is lush and well-watered, with streams that “came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground.”

In the midst of a lush spring, it’s easy to believe in an Edenic garden where there is no shortage of water and the plants all but water themselves.

 

Webs of wonder

Today has been a drizzly day: the kind of day when you don’t mind staying inside grading papers. After lunch, I went outside to photograph drizzle-drops on spider silk:  dewy jewels that draped our backyard shrubs with webs of wonder.

This is a test entry posted from the Flickr app on my tablet, just to see how and whether it works.

 

“Now what” November

The sun has been playing hide-and-seek all day, occasionally appearing with gold-gleaming splendor, then retreating behind a stern brow of cloud.

Earlier this afternoon when the neighborhood was bright and glowing, J and I set out to walk to lunch, and by the time we’d reached the end of our street, the day had slipped into an ominous gloom. There was a pelting of raindrops and a scatter of sleet before the sun reappeared as if nothing had happened. In “now what” November, you can expect any sort of meteorological mood swing, and that’s exactly what you’ll get.

This is my Day 8 contribution to NaBloPoMo, or National Blog Posting Month, a commitment to post every day during the month of November: thirty days, thirty posts.

 

May showers

April was warm and dry, so this year we seem to have reversed the usual seasonal progression, with April flowers bringing May showers.

Last night I collected a pile of essay portfolios in Keene; tomorrow, my literature students will submit their final exams online. This means I’m hunkered down with a heaping pile of grading, something I’m actually looking forward to. There’s something comfortable and even cozy about curling up with a pile of papers when it’s gray and drizzly outside, and I’m looking forward to staying close to home and enjoying my big backyard now that I’m done with commuting to Keene until summer school starts in a few weeks.

 

Studded

Another morning steeped in gray drizzle. A sprawling rose bush stands studded with raindrops and thorns.

This is my day thirteen contribution to this month’s River of Stones.

 

A good day for ducks

If you ever want to photograph Boston’s “Make Way for Ducklings” statue without throngs of children perched and posing on mama duck and her brood, just walk through the Public Garden on a rainy evening, when you’ll have the place almost entirely to yourself.

On Saturday night, J and I took a rainy stroll through the Public Garden on our way to a symphony concert, just as we did last year. Whereas last year, the Public Garden was full of tulip-appreciators of all shapes and sizes, on Saturday night, the rain kept all but the most diehard park visitors away, including a couple in wedding finery who stayed huddled in their limosine rather than venturing outside for a spring-green photo-shoot.

Although it was too wet for swan-boats, the Public Garden’s resident mute swans were undeterred by rain, one of the pair standing sentry at their usual nest-site. It won’t be long until this sentry will be sitting on a stick nest while her mate runs off any intruding ducks. Until then, a rainy Saturday night is a quiet time in the garden, the weather perfect for waterfowl of all kinds.

 

There will come soft rains

This morning, apropos of nothing, I remembered the Ray Bradbury short story about a robotic house that continues to function after its inhabitants have died in a nuclear blast, and the opening line from the Sara Teasdale poem that gives the story its title:

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground…

My recollection of this story and these lines wasn’t entirely random, of course. It was raining softly this morning, and the air is rife with the smell of snow-melt and mud. Despite all the talk of April showers, I find March to be the rainier month: April rains are warm and full of promise, but March rains are cold and bleak, more akin to winter snows than summer storms. If you’re walking an old, slow dog, even a soft March rain will soak right through a raincoat or parka, chilling you to the bone. It’s easy to imagine the world is either beginning or ending on a cold, rainy March morning: an open case whose jury is still out.

This morning and on other dog-walks this week and weekend, my thoughts were with Japan. When you’re walking an old, slow dog on a cold, rainy day, it’s easy for your mind to wander, and as I felt the elements seep through my raincoat and clothes this morning, I kept wondering what it would be like to be homeless, traumatized, and disoriented on gray and drizzly day like this. The weather in Japan right now is like spring in New England: chilly with only an occasional promise of warmth. What would it be like, I wonder, to find yourself cast out in weather like this, the earth moving under your feet, the ocean rising up to swallow you, and the detritus of a power plant left in shambles threatening to irradiate you?

These past few nights, J and I have spent our evenings watching CNN even though their presumably “breaking news” only repeats the same videos and stories over and over, the same worries and questions still unanswered. Instead of looking to the familiar journalistic faces to give us answers, I’ve come to see this evening TV-time as a kind of meditation, the same pictures and videos repeating again and again like a kind of litany. No matter how many times I see the videos of waves swallowing cars and houses, I keep watching in disbelief; no matter how many times I hear the stories of people swept out of their loved ones’ grasps, I can’t help but be moved. No matter how many times we witness and hear these stories of catastrophe and disaster, they both shock and surprise, as if we didn’t actually believe that suffering, death, and impermanence truly exist in our sheltered lives.

Last night, there was a bit of truly breaking news while J and I were holding our nightly CNN vigil. At one point during his evening broadcast, Anderson Cooper announced with stunned amazement that the remaining workers at the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant had been evacuated due to elevated radiation levels, a news flash that caused the nuclear scientist Cooper had been interviewing to nearly sputter with surprise. How could workers simply walk away from a malfunctioning nuclear plant, leaving it to deteriorate into total meltdown unattended? This morning, we learned that workers at the plant have returned, risking their own lives and health to avert the crisis, but that moment of sputtering disbelief still makes me think of Ray Bradbury’s eerie story. What would happen if humans were annihilated, leaving nothing but their computers, power plants, and other gadgets to continue chattering, whirring, and irradiating in their absence?

In that Ray Bradbury story, the futuristic house that continues cooking breakfast, washing dishes, and reciting poetry after its inhabitants have been vaporized, leaving nothing but silhouettes on a charred external wall, is ultimately destroyed by fire, the end of its world coming with a “great quantity of smoke.” Are we arrogant enough to believe our human inventions will continue to function without us, defying both entropy and inertia? In that Sara Teasdale poem, the speaker concludes that “Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree, / If mankind perished utterly.” This morning, walking in my own soft rains, I couldn’t decide which weather was better: rains that might cool a nuclear reactor left to its own devices, or gentle sun to shine on survivors with a mercy not shown by earth and sea.