True Birth

Today is my child's Birth day. To day she sat upon her father's knee and received her name and her rightful place in the family. Rosalda Aurelia Methot. I dressed her in her first real dress and tied her curls high on top of her head and brought her to the Temple to be acknowledged as the latest child to survive this long. Now, no matter what happens she will, at least, be recorded in the family archives as having existed - of having been born. She is only the second of my births to make it to the status of human in the eyes of our society. Thank the Goddess, she is two years old today!

Best birthday ever

The taste of rain

Rain. Rain has a very distinctive taste. By that I don't mean catching raindrops on your tongue or drinking from a rain barrel. I mean instead the taste of it in the air. Snow you can smell when it's coming but rain you can taste is coming.

Another thing about rain is that it hurts. Well, at 70 miles an hour it hurts. It was in anticipation of this that I sat at the overlook high in the Cascades appreciating the valley - who's name escapes me at the moment - and tasting the rain in the air. I figured I had about an hour before it hit. Yeah, I know, that's a ridiculous thing to say, "reckon ah gots 'bout an hour for the rain hits". Margaret pokes fun at me when I put forth such foolishness as well. But she knows exactly what I mean; she can taste the rain as well.

Unlike me, she has the good sense not to put herself into those situations that will likely result in being rained on at 70 mph. so it was alone that I sat tasting the rain. The V-Twin under me thumped as it idled as I decided there was no way I was to outrun the rain were I to leave then or 15 minutes later. So I reached down and turned the bike off. Then I sat. I sat and listened to the mountain's ambience of eagles, wind and distant river. I sat, with my eyes closed and tasted the rain. I smiled at the potential for metaphor of waiting for the inevitable deluge that was to come but, for right here, for right now if only for this short while, I was dry, I was comfortable and quiet; the world was peaceful. No one needed or expected anything of me; I had no schedule to adhere to or list of things to accomplish by the end of the day. It was just me, my bike, the mountain and the taste of rain.

Rain

The front had come through just before dawn, arriving in a rush of wind and thunder. Peter had been drifting in and out of a light sleep; occasionally a flash of lightning would illuminate the bedroom and his eyes would flicker open, only to drift closed as a distant rumble of thunder sounded. But when the storm arrived in earnest there was no more sleeping - the winds battered branches against the walls and roof, and the thunder crashed loud enough to set off the car alarm and send the dog whining under the bed. He'd moved quickly into his clothes and had run out into the back yard in his bare feet to grab up the kids' toys and the lawn chairs before they blew away.

Now he stood under the shelter of the back patio. The front had moved past and had subdued into a steady soaking rain that pattered on the wide leaves of the garden plants and hissed on the gravel by the driveway. The muggy heat of the night before had given way to a cool crispness that hinted at the possibility of fall and Peter stood, feeling the cold water on his feet. He thought about going inside but wanted to enjoy the sound of the rain, welcome after so many weeks of baking drought.

The kitchen door opened behind him and his wife looked out. She stood, arms crossed for warmth, watching the rain from behind the screen door. They savored the cool for a long while, then she said, "Come on in honey, it's chilly out here!"

He stirred and turned to look at her.

"Coffee's on," she said, and he went back into the house.

Meditation on rain clouds

Mist on the mountains. Rain clouds dark grey, pregnant with the promise of heavy pouring rain, waiting for their water to break - to bring forth their children - mist, drizzle, downpour, soaking, running flooding - rain. agh. In the lexicon of fantasy ( and so many other genres) the dark rain clouds loom, enclose, intimidate and breed a certain stoic kind of human. But we are all stoic in some way - in the desert it is to be dry-tough. So what about misty mountains brings forth this image? Perhaps it is the appearance of indifference to the wet air that would steal our human warmth, bringing our heat down to a chill cool fish-like level while still we keep our fires burning. To live in such a climate breeds a type of Man that will always seek the path of least resistance, working down and around all obstacles until enough have joined to create the mightiest force of nature - the flood. Strong, we no longer avoid the obstacles but envelope them and push them under and away, destroying and renewing. Hadrian's Wall could not contain the Picts, the Great Wall did not stop the Mongols. What wall are we to destroy next?

Rain - 5/15/11

"Hey, a mind is a terrible thing to waste, right?"

"It's a terrible thing to give away, too!"

We sat in silence. The windshield wipers kept a steadily losing pace against the rain beating down. The weather had been changing every year lately, with rain coming sooner and staying later, less snow on the hills....I looked out the window rather than at my brother. He was furious, but he wasn't going to stop me. My husband, on the other hand....well, he'd been out of work for almost three years. I had a degree, I was young enough, and now we had an opportunity to move north. I swallowed hard, then controlled my face. All that damn rain....

"I'm definitely not giving it away, you know." I still couldn't look at him. He kept his eyes on the road, but I could see his fingers clenching and unclenching the steering wheel. Trucks full of sandbags were headed in the opposite direction. I knew why, and I also knew that Jim was out there, fighting that losing battle to keep our already-drenched fields from getting wetter. Much wetter. I finally started to cry, I couldn't help myself.

"Bill, what if I forget everything? They say I won't, but I know that they're lying! I don't believe that they can lift a neural map without collateral damage - what if I forget Jim? What if I forget....oh, my god!" I couldn't press my hands in my face hard enough to stop the images of what I'd lose, if they slipped up, if they lied.....the farm. Mom and dad. The animals. Our first disastrous, lovely date. Oh, my god. And then unbidden came all the things that I wanted to lose - the drowned goats, the neighbor's dairy barn floating away, the empty bank account, the look on Jim's face when I miscarried and we couldn't leave because the bridge was out. I nearly died, I don't know why I didn't, and then burying the twins in soggy ground and piling on the rocks to keep them down there in the mud. Oh, yeah, I'd like to forget that. I wiped my face with my hand, pushed back my hair, took a deep breath.

"Bill, you won't leave me there, will you? You'll stay with me no matter what? If this works, we can all leave, you know. You and Marta can come with us. I promise."

Bill gave a sharp laugh. "Will you put it in writing?"

Looks like rain (or just rain in general)