Thoughts Inspired by Torrential Rain
When the rain comes down like this, a rain that makes the air look hazy, a rain that would soak you in just a few moments of standing absorbed in it, it often makes me think of New Orleans. It's a rain that, to me, speaks of adventure. I once stood out on some street in the French Quarter some time in the Summer of 1995 and chose to get drenched in it. It was a New Orleans hot day and the rain was cooling to a warm swimming pool temperature, the kind of temperature you can just comfortably lounge in forever without getting cold and it was so nice to cool down to that temperature. I didn't think, as I stood there with my umbrella closed in my hand body and clothing soaking up the rain in the middle of the street, about the paper in my pocket on which I had written names and phone numbers and crucial information for my travels. Ink bled silently as I savoured the rain. I would spend the rest of the trip occasionally struggling to figure out what was written on some portions of that paper. For a while this evening it was that kind of rain and the sky was not dark yet but getting there with clouds high over the trees still picking up gold and pink bits of the fading light. Awash in that particular feeling, calmly quietly pulsing with life I put on the first of Dead Can Dance albums, which if you know it, is delightfully intense in a fully immersive way. It is music, like the rain, that sings of adventure. I have had countless adventures, certainly more than I can count easily with my oft hazy memory. My memory is a mischievous thing, like a colourful bird in the forest, sometimes fleeting sometimes vividly in view, and often unpredictable.
Returned home from a sacred experience of a mundane errand, I greeted the quarter sized spider who lives in a web perfectly situated beneath the wall light by the door, took off my wet and muddy shoes, greeted my lovely wife, and wandered into the kitchen where with thoughts on New Orleans I poured myself the last half cup of day and a half old coffee into the whimsical coffee cup I bought for myself for my 40th birthday in Iceland. I scooped some ice cream, or rather busied myself with putting away dishes so the ice cream in the container would have melted in the warm air just enough to easily scoop, and then retired to my office. There on my gargantuan solid wood roll top desk which I acquired on a bit of an adventure north of New Orleans back in 2010 sits a self healing cutting mat which I bought either in Boston while in the summer architecture program at the Harvard School of Design or perhaps I bought it in grad school in LA. On this mat I will cast a spell. It's a simple spell. Mundane in its purpose. Mundane enough to share on the internet. (Some people believe that most or all magic should be done somewhat in secret, but the world is so full of magic that I think it better that simple workings such as these be considered more commonplace.) Each day I do a spell to protect my knee and help it heal. Being injured as I am now really irritates me. I don't like to have my actions in the world impeded, especially by my own special temporary physical inability to do them. I figured out this magic when I had Covid and found it potent. And so, now with this injury I ask my body which is part of the all-being to respond to my will and knit itself back together as quickly as metaphysically possible in a way that doesn't draw energy away from anyone-anything else that needs it. So it's just me and my primal energy battery and the ambient sewing machine of the world working together to let me walk like normal and then run and then do all the crazy shit I love to do as soon as possible.
With all these thoughts of adventure and the places I've been and the weather I've experienced and the things that I've done and a sea of memories I am reminded just how much of my life I have spent like this--injured. Rather a lot, by some standards perhaps. My knees in particular. Sometimes a shoulder. Occasionally an ankle. Once an elbow, once a big toe. Two hernia surgeries. Adolescent sports seasons missed, performances missed, gigs turned down, trees not climbed, gym sessions that never happened, roofs not cleaned, friends not picked up in the air, and simple walkabouts not taken. All in all something like 3 years of my life give or take. I have no idea how unusual or normal that is. I've never broken a bone and I consider myself very, very lucky with my health as I've seen over the decades other of my young and healthy friends have to deal with all manner of serious condition. I feel very, very fortunate. Anyway all of this occurred to me in a series of moments (shorter than the amount of time it took me to type this) as the rain poured down and I went about the business of locking a door to a basement of a house a few minutes drive away. A house I lived in that is being sold. A house full of memories just like rain and spiders and desks and coffee cups and everything else, that bright bird making a particularly lengthy visit, showing me the colors of its feathers in the fading golden dusk light.
Returned home from a sacred experience of a mundane errand, I greeted the quarter sized spider who lives in a web perfectly situated beneath the wall light by the door, took off my wet and muddy shoes, greeted my lovely wife, and wandered into the kitchen where with thoughts on New Orleans I poured myself the last half cup of day and a half old coffee into the whimsical coffee cup I bought for myself for my 40th birthday in Iceland. I scooped some ice cream, or rather busied myself with putting away dishes so the ice cream in the container would have melted in the warm air just enough to easily scoop, and then retired to my office. There on my gargantuan solid wood roll top desk which I acquired on a bit of an adventure north of New Orleans back in 2010 sits a self healing cutting mat which I bought either in Boston while in the summer architecture program at the Harvard School of Design or perhaps I bought it in grad school in LA. On this mat I will cast a spell. It's a simple spell. Mundane in its purpose. Mundane enough to share on the internet. (Some people believe that most or all magic should be done somewhat in secret, but the world is so full of magic that I think it better that simple workings such as these be considered more commonplace.) Each day I do a spell to protect my knee and help it heal. Being injured as I am now really irritates me. I don't like to have my actions in the world impeded, especially by my own special temporary physical inability to do them. I figured out this magic when I had Covid and found it potent. And so, now with this injury I ask my body which is part of the all-being to respond to my will and knit itself back together as quickly as metaphysically possible in a way that doesn't draw energy away from anyone-anything else that needs it. So it's just me and my primal energy battery and the ambient sewing machine of the world working together to let me walk like normal and then run and then do all the crazy shit I love to do as soon as possible.
With all these thoughts of adventure and the places I've been and the weather I've experienced and the things that I've done and a sea of memories I am reminded just how much of my life I have spent like this--injured. Rather a lot, by some standards perhaps. My knees in particular. Sometimes a shoulder. Occasionally an ankle. Once an elbow, once a big toe. Two hernia surgeries. Adolescent sports seasons missed, performances missed, gigs turned down, trees not climbed, gym sessions that never happened, roofs not cleaned, friends not picked up in the air, and simple walkabouts not taken. All in all something like 3 years of my life give or take. I have no idea how unusual or normal that is. I've never broken a bone and I consider myself very, very lucky with my health as I've seen over the decades other of my young and healthy friends have to deal with all manner of serious condition. I feel very, very fortunate. Anyway all of this occurred to me in a series of moments (shorter than the amount of time it took me to type this) as the rain poured down and I went about the business of locking a door to a basement of a house a few minutes drive away. A house I lived in that is being sold. A house full of memories just like rain and spiders and desks and coffee cups and everything else, that bright bird making a particularly lengthy visit, showing me the colors of its feathers in the fading golden dusk light.