We need rain.
The city of Durham– no, the entire state of North Carolina– is experiencing the worst drought in our history. As of yesterday, we have something like 52 days of water left. That’s not a very happy thought. If it doesn’t rain (and in this land of perpetual sunshine and blue skies, that’s not looking likely), What In the World Will Happen?
We don’t have droughts here in Developed Countries, right? Certainly not in America. Good heavens! This kind of thing is only supposed to happen Far Away, in countries I’ve never heard of. In fact, I’m not supposed to be bothered with this kind of thing At All. I live in a country where I can get heavily caffeinated drinks without caffeine and can order them in sizes labelled in languages I don’t speak and I can do this at the threshold of my favorite grocery/department store while I’m doing my Christmas shopping. Aren’t we a little advanced for a drought? Isn’t a lack of rain– um– primitive???
There’s a small part of me that wants to blame somebody for this, which I suppose shouldn’t be surprising, as fixing blame is the nature of the beast– the Human Beast, I mean. But I know better than that, and yet still I want to blame someone. And whom, one might ask, might I blame? I’ll tell you.
I want to blame people who don’t like rain. I know, I know. It’s not their fault. And people who don’t like rain– or any variety of inclement weather, for that matter– can be wonderful people. I number some of them among my dearest friends. But don’t they see, in their desire for Every Day to be cloudless and blue, that Rain Must Needs Come At Some Point? And, moreover, With Some Frequency? If it doesn’t, then This happens.
Oh, I can hear them now: “I know, I know. But I don’t mind rain every once in awhile. I just don’t like it to come too often.”
I am Just The Opposite of this. No, I don’t mean that I want it to rain every day, though a little daily shower might actually be nice. But I do– I admit it– like rain. Yes, I do. Is that primitive of me? Is it uncivilized? Well, I’ll say it again anyway: I like rain. I like gloom. I like darkening skies and quickening winds and, even– dare I admit it here??– Cold Weather.
Crazy, isn’t it? Just makes you almost want to quit reading my blog.
Fine.
I had a friend tell me recently — a friend with a notoriously excellent vocabulary– that my desire for cold weather (in November, mind you, not in July) was surly. Well, I won’t start on that here, except to say that Anyone who knows me knows (as does this friend) that, among the many adjectives that might be used to describe me, surly Just Isn’t One of them.
I think my friend might also know the coming protestations– my reasoning for liking a cold day or two, for wanting the winter months to act like winter months, and not try to pass themselves off as a perpetual October (and I love October weather, mind). The truth is this: I think that “bad” weather is good for the soul. It is good for one, in my opinion, to be hemmed in by elements larger than ourselves, to have our activities curtailed or altered by the whim of the weather or even the pattern of the earth. It is good to be limited, to be forced indoors, to suffer the introspection that a rainy day calls us to.
I love happiness, make no mistake. But an honest reckoning with unhappiness is what makes us real people. Nothing but sunshine and warm weather is a Lie. And, painful as it might be, I Want Desperately and Always To Be Real.
Also, a lack of rain leads to drought. That’s all I’m saying.
In addition to all of this lack of rain, I do believe I am suffering a kind of drought of my own. I wrote to my friend Paul about it, and his response was comforting: This is normal, Rebecca, he told me. Finishing your thesis does just about wipe you out. Feeling empty the way you do is a natural thing, he said.
Still, it’s odd. It isn’t what I expected. Where I anticipated relief and a zest to do all the things I hadn’t been able to do, I find instead a kind of vague malaise, a sort of static and impenetrable lassitude about things. Perhaps it’s because so much in the way of Other Work has just moved right in to where the thesis used to be: I have So Many papers to grade from my dear and patient students. But perhaps it comes, too, from having spent So Much time and energy (a year and a half, really) on One Book. Now it’s over and I’m all emptied out and I’m feeling, well, Dry.
Now, don’t worry about me. I’m not dwelling on it or anything. Honestly, I have Way Too Much to think about. But I do think about the drought when I turn on the faucet, when, bleary-eyed, I start the water for my shower at the beginning of (another) Way Too Early day. Please God, let it rain.
And sometimes, when I sit down here, for example, and try to find the words for another post like this one, or when I find myself wondering what I should choose for my next read, or when I (so rarely) allow myself to think about that book I was writing once upon a time, I find that all I have to work with is dry and crumbling soil, the residue of the memory of a creative impulse that I once had a very long time ago.
Eventually It Will Rain. It Will Rain. It Will. Because no drought lasts forever. Right?
