a walk in the rain

it’s rainy season here. every year i forget and then remember again. oh yes, it’s nearly spring. this is our season for weather. glorious weather.

i’m backing out of the driveway for my lunch break, river’s buckled in the backseat and i step out to lock the gate. i grab my camera because the foliage here is always hiding something beautiful.

“what are you taking a picture of?” she startles me from across the fence, my bubble is burst. huh?! who me? i always am me, assuming guilt or wrong-doing or worry of trespass when in actuality people are just people being friendly who want to chat. it’s something internal, from my childhood or simply how i’m wired. i know that even when i’m white haired and eighty i’ll feel like the 16 year old looking over her shoulder with one toe over the law.

my camera is about three inches from a plant, the plants that grow up and over her fence. “i’m taking a picture of the raindrops” i tell her. she lingers and i dont’ know what else to say. “you’re a teacher?” she asks, and asks me my name. “and you’re a photographer too?” i’m feeling squirrely like someone’s trying to pin me down and i’m the slippery fish who wants to swim away. she learns my name and i learn hers between the raindrops and the engine that’s still running with a patient four year old in the backseat. “i like details” i mention like it’s an important thing to know. perhaps it is. she has probably seen me on my knees in the dirt or with my face in the foliage before. “did you get the photo?” she asks, still watching me. “yep.”

she smiles and i smile before we both head back to our own little worlds.
“The best thing one can do when it’s raining is to let it rain.”
~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

we drive in the rain down the block to the park, and we put on our boots and hats and take a walk in the rain. we have the park to ourselves, and it’s white all white from fog and rain.

i revel in the details.
because that’s what i find important.

when i am with my camera i have an easy time of getting small. small, smaller, smallest. the tiniest details are what tell the story. everything else can be a blur, the blur is part of the art. the beauty of the unknown and the colors that swirl around with it.

and so i am with my camera alot these days. my camera makes me feel good, makes me feel accomplished. i’m ignoring my words these days. maybe because i hear myself repeating “use your words!” all day long to young ones just learning. but my words seem to come out of me with large swirling motions. with a largeness that i cannot harness and reign in. a largeness that overwhelms my need for detail and love for being small.

so for now i procrastinate my deadline. a real one with word counts and need for editing. i procrastinate because it feels too big and i don’t know yet how to chisel and chip it down, to work it so small that it won’t crack or melt from the heat of my hands. it catches me off guard, this realization. this ease of camera and stress of words. if i were to dream my dream and write a book, how would i find the moment, the tiniest drop that becomes the power to explode concentric rings from within? how would i narrow it down to just one moment, one breath? and how would i make that breath stretch and last from the deepest depths back up to the light at the surface?  

“Every blade of grass has its angel that bends over it and whispers,

‘Grow, grow.’”