Reflections On Some Rainy Days

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Indeed, the last big hoorah of the hurricane season has brought a lot of rain to the RTP region of North Carolina. We need the rain without the pain. The rain is accompanied by leaves ready to make their exit. 
Leaves are wrongly named. They don't. They grow and flutter, do their photochemical duty and then they fall. They congregate. They must be evacuated, shooed and sent away - or mulched. Left to their own they would be left to their own.
The rain is a lot more welcome than the H1N1 or any other seasonal crud. 
Despite even the fact that wet roads make people slow down and punish the ones that don't it helps create auto accidents and pain and aggravation.
The plus of the weather is that for the arena of creatives, excuses to put off projects reflect off the closed windows.
In previous weeks it may have been too pretty to write, gild or illustrate. This wet weather has removed that line of faulty thinking.
Distractions aside, the increased humidity makes some art applications easier to do.
Watercolor, gouache and gilding gesso remain more workable for a bit longer.
Papers are a bit more malleable and are more responsive to the bone folder and embossing tools.


Raymond Foss caught some of the feeling of this in this poem:


Alone in the Rain


I am alone on my porch, in the rain.
Nightfall is closing in.
Now, the island is lonely.
The world is muffled.


The rain falls on the porch roof.
Two mourning doves twitter as
They go from tree to tree,
Branch to branch.
Now they coo and call
To their mate.


The water shimmers
As sheets of rain
Disturb its surface.
A small yellow warbler alights
On a branch before me,
Ready to add its cheerful song to the mix.


Rain now falls from the roof
The staccato of the heavy
Drops on the hard ground below.


A lone boat courses across the water,
Eager for home.
It leaves but a wake, lost on the rocks.
Mist obscures the shoreline.
Loons steer by me.


I am still, writing these lines.
But I am anxious.
How I long for the sun
For the warmth to join me again
In my rustic cabin in the lake.


Written 6/18/2000 - same day as Dew in the Morning and Ten Feet Overhead


HE knew what to do with a rainy day. tim www.timjohnsonphoto.com