Musing on the rain and other stuff

I’ve lived in this climate, off and on, for over 20 years, and I can’t say I mind the rain.  It is cleansing and reassuring, and the days are long enough now that when the sun sets below the cloud line you get to see the bellies of the clouds lit from below and it is beautiful and reminds you of that thing beyond all understanding that brings tears to your eyes, just because it is so beautiful and irrefutable.  And you just know that you’re a part of it; a tiny, essential part of this whole thing, and that it is you, and you are it.  But no, you aren’t really, because it is so much bigger than that; so much bigger than this corporeal form that extends to the ends of your fingernails.  It is better to say that you are only a part of it:  essential, fully-integrated, and infinitesimally small.

This idea of oneness is a source of reassurance.  When you can know, even just for a second, that all those terrible things and those beautiful things and those insanities that are all around you, are all just a part of it…well, then you have something.  There are so many faiths that have grasped at this concept:  Catholicism and Hinduism and Islam.  But, being a human, I have to place my template on this truth, this concept of oneness and I have to turn my face up to the lit underbellies of the clouds in the late spring and mouth the word “Why?”  Yet, somewhere in my self I know that it is a meaningless question.

As I understand it, if one believes in karma, truly believes in it, the way one believes in one’s mother, or the sun, or the barrel of the gun pointed in one’s face, there is no reason whatsoever, to ever believe that anything can go wrong, there is no reason to be afraid.  There is no need for despair; it’s irrelevant.  And joy, though it is still available, is tempered somewhat , mellowed like the mind of a man that has one more beer than he normally would of an evening.  Joy comes in the sanguine knowledge that everything comes around, always and forever.

I feel my own personal development, emotionally, intellectually, spiritually, has brought me to believe in karma.  Or my version of karma; I’m certainly no Hindu holy man, no Buddhist monk.  My interpretation of karma leads me to believe in the inevitability of things, the ultimate (incomprehensible) justice of the One.  And, frankly, that belief has carried me through some raging tempests.

But, with regard to writing, every once-in-a-while, you get one of those fits of…something…I don’t know…call it inspiration, and the words just flow through your fingers and out through your pen and flow right onto the paper, as if there were channels cut in its surface because the nib of the pen just follows them and the words just come out.  And then, you look back later, with your red pen in hand, but you can’t bring yourself to mark any of it, because, maybe it’s not perfect, but it is exactly what it should be, and it truly reflects where you were at the moment you put your hand down and followed the invisible channels on the face of the page.  Those are the best ones.  The frequency of their birth seems to be in direct correlation to the amount of time you spend writing.  And you might write ten pieces of schlock, and then you get one of those good ones.  And, I suppose that’s why you keep doing it.