Writing; an interesting form...
Last night, serendipitously, I stumbled over a writing-form that I thought you might find interesting, and decided to borrow it. It was in the 2001 Annual Music Issue of the Oxford American, on pp. 50-51, written by Ron Carlson, and titled "The Twenty-Seventh Rain." The form is a set of 27 different rains that are meaningful to Ron Carlson; here
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THE RAIN AFTER LONG DROUGHT, gratefully lapped by the yellowing grasses.
THE ICY RAIN, almost sleet, almost hail. There's no going out in it. It reminds me that the world is bigger, and stronger, and more substantial than any transient plans of mine.
THE TORRENTIAL RAIN, ecstatic climax of hours, days, weeks of oppressive humidity, sluicing sticky dust off cars, homes, roads, me.
THE YOM KIPPUR RAIN on my way home from Temple, a cold, uncomfortable, longed-for, otherwise-forbidden shower; a reminder that sometimes God relaxes the rules, but always and only on Its own terms.
THE INTERVENTION RAIN, that trapped us in the too-small house together long after we'd grown unable to tolerate each other's company, that pounded on the bongos while we said what should never have been (and needed to be) said, that drowned the comfortable silences and washed their twisted filthy corpses out to sea.
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THE UNEXPECTED RAIN, that teaches me every hole in the soles of my comfortably broken-in shoes.
THE SEWER-FILLING RAIN, that transmutes every city corner and too many basements into small ponds of dirty water.
THE WANNABE RAIN, not really rain at all, just a heavy mist striving for promotion.
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I never thought of finding a plot in the blackbirds, though. I guess these rains have a plot?
/houseboat/
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THE ELECTRIC RAIN raises the hair on my arms. Counting slowly between flash and boom to know how close is the lightning.
THE ENDLESS RAIN I will remember only seeing clouds and wet for the entire month of June.
THE ECSTATIC RAIN. Camping with friends singing and dancing naked in the field at midnight.
AUNT HELEN'S FUNERAL RAIN The heavens were crying along with us when we put Aunt Helen in the ground.
THE OMINOUS RAIN. August 2001. The Lammas Oracle predicted a Big Storm Coming, and we thought it was the downpour that happened seconds after our ritual ended.
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