The Silver Curtain

I am drawn to certain things, and I cannot tell why.

Certain types of music, certain faces, certain scents…and these are not merely things congenial to me. They seem to have an underlying pull, a significance to me. Why? Why this sort of music or this shading of light, and not another? Some time ago, I flirted for a while with the idea of reincarnation and thought perhaps the mysterious affinities were related to a past life. But I could never make the full idea of reincarnation “fit,” mostly because I looked around, almost completely unsuccessfully, to see if I could discern anyone who seemed to be an “old soul,” someone who had learned deep lessons from past incarnations and was busy building on those experiences. Perhaps its some sort of collective thing, or something related to elusive dreams…I don’t know. What I do know is that there are certain things, certain places that seem so, so familiar to me.

My affection for rainy days is one of those things. Today is for me a perfect fall day. Slightly chilly, as gray as flint, with a steady rain muffling most sounds. When such a day arrives, my spirit lifts and my senses become keen and I revel in each impression, each glimpse of things seen in rainlight. I catch drops from the silver curtain on my tongue, and enjoy the feel of them coursing down through my beard. I can sit absorbed for an hour watching raindrops gather on my sleeve, or on a particularly fetching flat leaf, or twirling in a puddle like little music-box dancers. My wife and I are compatible in so many ways, and this is one of those things. She loves a gray, rainy day as much as she loves anything in the natural world.

But we are odd ducks. Most people immediately complain when they know it’s going to rain. They use words like “dreary” and “depressing.” It’s interesting that I rarely  hear these people work up much enthusiasm for sunny days, but when rain is forecast, they act as if acid will be pouring from the skies, burning and destroying everything they hold precious. They spend their work days inside hermetically sealed, centrally heated and airconditioned buildings with tight roofs and their only contact with rain is when they are forced to laboriously trot from their unnecessarily complex automobiles to the door of their office, with impractical little telescoping umbrellas held aloft or jackets draped over their heads. They sit at lunchtime and eat salads, the ingredients of which were dependent on rain, while gazing with gloomy eyes out through the windows and sighing, and aren’t they poor, pitiful creatures to be visited with such curses as water from the heavens?

And so on days like this one, I studiously avoid listening to conversations about the rain, because I do not occupy the same world as those who whine and complain about it. I am grateful for this world of rain today, and it has nothing to do with iPhones or debates or apps or touchdowns or spreadsheets or delicious rumors. It falls on the just and the unjust, and on the appreciative and the resentful alike.

I wish I were outside in it all the day. How I hope there is rain in Heaven!

~ S.K. Orr