Drip Drip Drop
Written by Iam Hanuman on Tuesday the 18th of January 2011
As the rain falls down upon the dusty downs and the rats scurry to their holes in the floorboards, I grab a cider and a packet of crisps to enjoy a rare set of moments listening to the drone rustle of the watery manna. The contents of my hands do not do this justice, but they are a start despite their pale nature. Let us progress so that something better may come.
When I was a lapdog I used to run to the windows and risk death by electric whenever a thunder storm would strike. I would press my lips to the cold window, creating a condensation halo around my face. I would gaze at the play going on in the air and with abundant awe I would wish that I was floating and buffeting and rolling in the wishy washy windy with the electrons and neurons and pleurons. My mother would pull me roughly away splitting my connection with this other in such an awful way that I would feel the lack for hours. I would console myself by playing with the buttons on the betamax until the budgie squawked at me. Upstairs then, retreating to my bed, listening to any rain that might still be outside my window. That was just enough to keep me alive; to remind me that the marvel existed.
Being in the rain is different. Being in the storm. Being in the wind. There is an attraction in rain-dancing and I do not deny that. There is a great pull from the thrill of storm-chasing and I firmly concur with that statement. However, there is a voyeuristic pleasure which is perhaps semi-perverse in viewing the wonder-play from the in-side. The barrier of glass, plasti-glass, transparent aluminium, force-field which allows you to be the watcher seeing this elemental grapple is a divide which excites. It is not the same to stand in it. The light in my room and the darkness out there. The warmth behind me and the cool touch of the pane on my cheeks as I rub them against the fence of glass. How cold is it out there? "Do you feel my warmth pulling infinitesimally from your own?” I ask that external force.
Those frequent days back in days-gone-by as I skirted off from my desk of schooling so that I could again stand at my ramparts to view the barbarian hordes driving down from the dark terrible sky above. Those times where I heard a distant call from an adulterer requesting my return to that little unimportant piece of furniture, battered, gauged, inked and full of dog-eared books. Ignoring these interruptions I always continued my surveying of the troops out there doing battle while I sat in the campaign tent, comparatively dry and warm.
Today is a rainy day. Can I take a duvet day please? I have a question for you which I require an answer to whenever you have a minute to consider it. Please listen carefully and I will set it out for you so that you can understand. I hope it is not too difficult to grasp with your mind which may be that of a fly or that of a master-race from a space-realm in a dimension further down the alphabet. The question is, please may I pull up a chair and sit here at this viewing station, with a plate of delicately made cheese salad sandwiches full of Gunton's pickle, some draught cider in an old lemonade bottle purchased from a cricket club, complete silence apart from perhaps a small creature on my lap which purrs me to a state akin to that of the agitated particulates out there in the storm tornado motion? For that time period I want to remove myself from humanity and instead try to immerse myself in the pure universe, plug in to the brain-stem of creation with an organic or inorganic press-piece. Please may I do that? Have you had sufficient time to reflect upon my request?
Many years past I was in a moving vehicle partaking of the rain-viewing and the radio in the background was playing the Bolero and I could hear discussion of the TV show 'V' plattering at the periphery of my ears, and my parents and one of their parents were probably not strapped into their seats for they cared not for this ecstasy which was available. I was beginning to be transported to that place reserved usually for demi-gods and Aryans of Sanskrit. I was separating from them for this journey. The car was propelling us to a sleepy little fishing village on the north coast of Devon called Brixham and yet the rain was propelling me to Valhalla.
Today I wish to rest upon the breast of this window, feel the rain breathe to me, numb myself to the thunder's heartbeat. Today I will take this, if you will allow. Please give me the hall pass. Sketch a sick note and I'll promise to live up to my own promises. No blemishes, no horcruxes, no terraces, just the honesty of the promises that I have made in honour of this rain, this drain which takes me to that other window. The perfect window, the archetype of this one I stare through now. That window looks out to the spindle on which all of this essence spins, spiral of CDs down to the never and up to the ever, DNA of the godthinginsideoutside.
Thanking you in advance for your assistance.
The Weather-Man