Rain

[Prose VII] 

For Lulu.
Never dismiss the faeries; this comes from my own⎯

It had started to rain before I had left the building. The end of my day had come and I collected my things to leave. It became clear enough when I was outside that it was yet another rainy day in Wales. But this was no light shower I had found myself under; this was a torrent of water let loose from the sky to batter the earth below. This realisation was quick in settling in in my mind, and added to itself a hint of sour delight when it came to me that I had only a hooded jumper to wear through this child-storm. Accepting I would be far from dry when I got there, I started to walk home.

The heavy falling of rain—like that of the downpour I was now walking through—changes one's world in such a way. Those caught under it, braving it to make their way somewhere, seem to be hurried, as if the hounds of time were chasing them down for no obvious reason. For myself, though, the most curious thing about the rain is its insulating effect. More often than not I find that when I'm out and it's really chucking down I become encased in myself. Every detail of the world around me is accentuated: the sound of the rain's patter as it hits ground, rooftop, waterproof; the almost hazy curtain made up of droplets; the chill that accompanies the rainfall. All the people I pass turn almost into disinterested spectres flitting through the streets, specimens that I study half-keenly.

In barely any time my clothes were soaked, nearly through and through. The textile of my shoes could hardly keep out the water such that my socks and feet soon felt like slush. I was drenched. It became as though I were wearing some awkward-fitting one-piece that was just as unwieldy as it was the most natural garment I could ever have worn. But then at this point I did something unexpected. I pulled back the hood of my top and turned my face toward the sky, so that I could feel the drops fall on me—every single one of them. There really was no reason behind it, either; it was spontaneous, I just had to do it. I had to feel the rain as it was sensed through my skin: something external to me as it felt inside of me. And because of this I felt I was something else. I was immersed in myself, so immersed in myself that I had... found the deepest point of my self. My world, just moments ago a bustling machine of sights and sounds, had become a microcosm. A universe made of and birthed within myself where I was both a spectator and a creator. I continued onward, an intangible being on the inside, a sopped heap of clothing and flesh sloshing its way home on the outside.

And a heap I certainly was when I finally got to my house. Immediately stripping off and tossing away my sodden clothes, my first and only thought was to shower. The hot water was an ecstasy. And this is another curiosity for me: a hot shower. There is something primal about the heat from the water stimulating the skin on my bare body. A sort of transcendence results from that physical sensation and, for a brief moment, I am overcome. It's as if I am removed from everything I know and everything I am. Ecstasy is certainly one way of putting it, but it's also much more. A millennium lived or a galaxy leapt, all in an instant: it's much like that. And I plunge into myself. Indeed, however deep in myself I had been while walking in the rain, this heat now drew me in even deeper.

Stepping out of the shower, I was anew. Drying myself was like wiping away the dirty, liquid remnants of a part of me that I no longer wanted or needed. I then stood before the mirror, naked, and used my towel to clear away the vapour on the glass. The man looking back—the droplets on his skin, that distinct sheen in his hair given by the water—was not the same man that had been before the downpour, is never the same man. I stared deep into his eyes, wondering what I could see in them. Perhaps I wanted to see that world that had emerged in him. After remaining puzzled like this for a while, I headed to my room to put on clothes and, by doing so, complete the regeneration the rain had instigated.

Now warmed and fresh to the point of contentment, I took a moment to look out my bedroom window. The rain had just about stopped and the sun had found a weakness in the grey defence of the sky. Out in the streets, everything and everyone appeared to slow down and settle back into the rhythm that the rain seemed to have interrupted. The outside world was as it once was, and I couldn't help contemplating that soon I would be a part of it again.

M.M. — Iulius–October MMXII