I don’t think so.
I was walking home at the end of my workday, which I had spent in a glass box that allows me to stare plaintively out at the world and whatever weather we are having, without getting to enjoy any of it. It had been a grey day, the kind that depresses everyone with oppressive cloud cover and dry, heavy air.
Then, around 4 o’clock, my favourite time of day, something wonderful happened. The air started to shimmer silver, and the sky darkened as the clouds thickened like rising bread. A trickle of rain began sprinkling on the asphalt, gradually building to a sheet that soaked everything. The parking lot turned black, and the brick-coloured chips around the shrubs outside glowed. It cleared after a little while, but just before my shift ended, the slow dripping turned into another shower, and I stepped out into it, clad in just a wooly sweater over my uniform.
At first, the droplets felt cold on me, but once my hair was fairly wet, it didn’t bother me any more. I strolled along the road in the silvery landscape, struck by how verdant the newborn grass was. The willow tree near the brook, where I cut branches to make wreaths and crowns, was dangling vibrant green buds against the rust and iron of the woods behind it. Tiny, sparse forsythia was swaying next to people’s driveways, blooming like pale stars. I could practically feel the lawns and empty lots burning with growth, bolting and reveling in the water that was soaking them. It made me feel like running. It was as though the whole world was hyperventilating, breathless with spring. I felt my life pulsing in me. I touched the part of humanity in me that is still an animal. We live as though being animals and being human are two seperate things. They aren’t, I felt it.
I thought about the rain, and how we used to do Rain Dances, or make up stories about Gods of thunder and lightening, back when civilization was young(er). When we are little tadpoles in school, we learn how we are mostly made up of water, how living things need water to live, how life began in the water. And I thought about what an awesome thing it is that this stuff that makes life possible is everywhere around us, all the time. What a gift it is that on a mercury-coloured day we can go for a walk, and have the flora glow around us as if lit up from the inside.
