I wished for rain last week. I was having one of those days where nothing was going right and I just wanted the weather to reflect my mood. My mind was cloudy, but I could tell it was full of dark things, too many things… I felt a little bit like Tayo – walking around in the here and now, but not thoroughly a participant. Random objects would recall memories that I’d forgotten I’d ever had… A sign on a door, the color of someone’s shoes, a minor chord played by a stranger on the piano, all these things assaulted me… There was my grandfather hardened like a skeleton after chemo treatments, there was that desperate glint that appeared in my father’s eyes when he yelled and the sound of my best friend’s voice as she said, “I forgot about you”.
I stepped outside and smiled as the rain fell. People were rushing and important papers were getting wet; I enjoyed every minute of it. The rain revived me as I walked and with every step I imagined the darkness that clouded my mind getting washed away, the rain taking it with it and down into the gutter where I didn’t have to see it anymore.
This walk made me think of cleansing and the ceremonies that Tayo undergoes. The rain was a sort of cleansing for me, but I couldn’t help thinking that it could be a cleansing for other people as well, an event that would connect them back to the Earth. As I was reading Ceremony I couldn’t get over the description of the white people’s connection with nature:
Then they grow away form the earth
Then they grow away from the sun
Then they grow away from the plants and animals.
They see no life
When they look
They see only objects.
The world is a dead thing for them
The trees and rivers are not alive
the mountains and stones are not alive.
The deer and bear are objects
They see no life. (123)
As in this description, I too get caught up in the world of objects. I think it’s easy to do here in college. My existence revolves around due dates for projects, papers, and presentations. I breathe in so many words, only to breathe them out again the next day in class. My dreams are about typing my papers and taking my tests. I feel like this is a problem. I think people aren’t thinking about the right things and I know that they aren’t being very observant. They don’t notice that most of the leaves have fallen; they don’t take the time to reassure themselves that the sky is blue. Honestly, I feel like it could be green one of these days and they wouldn’t notice it. However, the rain… The rain they see as an enemy. It makes them cold, and it gets them wet, but the good thing about rain is that it should, at least, for a second, make them forget about papers, tests, and presentations. It should remind them that they are human, and that they can only do so much. It’s a ceremony which many don’t want to undergo, but one that I believe is extremely necessary.
This is really lovely, Diana -- thanks.
ReplyDeleteI think I'm sort of in love with your post. I really enjoyed this, one because it helped me to realize just how much I appreciate the rain, and two because it made me take a step back from my own life for a moment and evaluate it. I completely agree that our society has made us succomb to the idea that the only things that matter in our life are deadlines and making other people happy. It's no longer about what the world brings to you, but rather what you can bring to everyone else in the world, how you can make other people happy. I know personally, I have the problem of putting myself last and everyone else first, which I've come to learn usually doesn't work out very well in the end. Sometimes, I hope for rainy days as well. Perhaps it's the metephorical cleansing that you mentioned, having it all just washed away. Perhaps it's the thought that knowing that after the rain is gone with all our feelings of desparity and devestation, a new day will come and eventually the sun will shine again, bringing beauty and clarity back into our lives.
ReplyDeleteSometimes we get so wrapped up in our own emotions and problems that we forget that there is always someone that's in a worse situation. Perhaps that's why we don't always notice the leaves falling or the blue sky. The human life has become so artifical, full of meaningless material things and somehow, we've forgotten about the simple things in life. Like the whites that you mentioned from the novel, we have lost touch with the earth and all the things in it and life has become nothing but a mindless indulgence. Your post reminded me of a song by Counting Crows called "Round Here," which includes the lyrics, "Well, I walk in the air between the rain through myself and back again, where? I don't know." It just really made me think about the idea that the rain is sort of this in-between that sometimes happens and like you said (if were lucky enough to experience it), helps us to get back to ourselves again. Once we are able to realize that we have lost touch with ourselves, others, the earth, we usually have a longing to get back to that familiar place and sometimes, the rain is a perfect way to get back, even though we don't always know "where" we're headed at the time.