Real Rain

It comes in sheets, unlike the whispy waters that caress California lovers. Annie had just recommended that we cover the trailer - the one we're converting into a mobile lab - with a tarp so the rains wouldn't get it. She walked away to do something and the rain came. I climbed up on top of the trailer, trying not to put my foot through its unfortified sheet metal roof, and yelled to Creature, would he please help me get the tarp put up. In the five minutes it took to get the thing spread out the puddles held in the creases of the tarp were inches deep. No longer helpful, I took my shirt off.

Coming down from off the trailer, I saw that the dozen or so movie people had huddled on the front porch, and the smokers were lighting their smokes as they contemplated how to keep their feet dry. Shirtless, I walked down the street with my spectacles removed and in my pocket. Every pocket or depression in the ground was full and filling.

I walked into the back yard and removed my shoes and socks. Standing shirless and barefooted on the grass with my hat keeping the pelting rain out of my eyes, I began to make the familiar Tai Chi movements that I have come to love: if the elements disagree with revolutionary lab-on-wheels construction [tongue meets cheek], one can at least protest stagnation with a little bit of healthy movement.

There, in the gushing downpour, standing in the midst of movie props set up to make our little volunteer center look more like a volunteer center, I cycled the elements:

Water, appropriately, moving bones and splashing puddles of me up against myself, invoking the principal of the substance that always falls through the cracks, pushes through any barrier given enough time, and which truly knows how to wait.

Earth, which obeys the cycles of life and time.
Wood, which moves without patience toward its goal,
Metal, which knows exactly what is right and lets fall away what is not,
Fire, which enjoys and consumes all it finds, rising and moving, rising and moving.

Rising and moving, I became a crane. I softened my eyes from their seeking and let them be passive, moving my attention to my bones, to my back and arms that stretch and fold, stretch and fold, keeping the wind beneath them and the horizon ahead. They become light, held up by air alone, and my body hangs from them. If my feet still touch the ground it is only with the slightest touch, and far below me on my rainy voyage, the worms come sopping from their muddy burrows.

Touching back down to earth, I walked back to the house to find that during my thirty minutes' journey the basement that I live in was flooded, and spent the next while bailing water back to the soil where it belonged. Beautiful day.

Love alone will save us. Let my mind remain in my body, let me fly to each and every one of my friends and family, and then abroad, finding family in sand, wind and sky, finding a friend in every eye. The air that I breathe is me, the air that you breathe is you, and we all breathe the same air.