As I sit here, listening to the long rain, a Ray Bradbury short story pops into my head, from The Illustrated Man. I always have liked the sound of a steady rain. There is something soothing and comforting about it. I turn the sound down on the tv and radio and just listen. I even have a recorded tape of a thunderstorm. I think it must be something in our inner psyche that likes the sound of water. Sure, some people are scared of thunderstorms, but a good steady rain on a lazy evening is hard to beat. The thought of the rain all around my house, is like a curtain. I feel more secure and private inside my house on a rainy evening. The streetlights cast little light; just enough to give it all a sparkle as you watch it come down.
There's actually two more days of rain in the forecast here. --Good weather to stay inside and watch old movies. The daylight during a long rain reminds me of Sunday afternoons, going to my grandfather's house with my mom. We visited him every other Sunday, and strangely, my memories are mostly of the weather on those days. It always seemed gray, with imminent rain. I was always a kid who thought about stuff like that. I liked the gray, rainy type of days. --They seemed much more interesting than the boring sunny days. Rainy days always held some mystery to me, and still do.
There's a lot more in a cloudy sky to see. A clear sunny day is always the same. A rainy day sky is limitless shades of gray. --Life, as I see it. ;~}
I don't know what it is. Something about this time of year, which always brings on a change in my perception of things. --For the better, I might add. Whatever the disappointments of Summer's heat and Fall's cocooning influence may have had, Winter's isolation seems to be just what I always need to appreciate the turmoil of the new beginning Spring always signifies to me. I've actually never been a big fan of Spring. --Too much hype regarding love and new "beginnings", whatever they may be. But, there is definitely something about the first few days of a warm spell and the longer light of an early March day that has always perked up my spirits and given me a different way of looking at things.
In most ways, I'm a thinker and not a "doer". But Spring has some sort of effect, like a bear waking from hibernation, which makes me plan and look forward to things I only obliquely thought of during winter. Somehow this year, things are going to be different, and that feeling is going to carry through Summer, Fall and Winter, is what I'm thinking. --I think that every year, in some way. But this time, really, something is different. I feel I'm at the place in my life where I'm at a point of self-actualization... a time when everything in the past means more now, and everything in the present is satisfactory. But what about tomorrow? What about that lull into Summertime, when things inevitably grow stagnant?
Is there a way to somehow capture that feeling of "Spring Fever" and keep it with you in the dog days of Summer? Summer, in and of itself, is one of those seasons which needs more spice and less heat. At least the seasons of Spring and Fall have that unpredicatable element going for them. Summer and Winter both suffer from an overdone, tired flavour that Spring and Fall never settle into. Something different is always percolating in the transitional seasons of Spring and Fall, and that's probably why I like them so much. --I don't want to feel trapped in a place in my life, and Summer and Winter have always seemed stifling to me, by one degree or the other.
So, while Spring is still technically a few weeks away, I am feeling the winds of change and the seeds of hope blowing in. March is a tumultuous month, and it and April are cohorts in the storms that spark a new way of looking at things. --Or, more exactly, an acceptance and embrace of change.
