2025-11-17 Rain In Berkeley when it rains it is an event. The children at my son's pre-school aren't allowed to go outside. The streets are flooding. In Seattle when the sun is out it is an event. After 9 months of wintery gray you have to be outside. It is clear enough to see Mt. Rainier from the UW campus. "The mountain is out". Students are sunbathing in bikinis. It is 68 degrees. After the summer, when the rain starts to pick up again, there's a collective sigh from introverts everywhere. They are grateful to stop going to social events and being outside. "Making the most" of the summer is finally over. -- When it rains in Berkeley I feel an out-of-body experience. People grumble about, hunched under umbrellas and adorned with rain gear. My hoodie is damp. I'm standing straighter. A grin is plastered across my face. Ahhh - my body relaxes - I feel consonant with the world around me. I wish you could experience this feeling without spending a decade in one place and then a decade in another. The Seattle -> Bay rainy day feeling is like... permission to go slow at the same time that everyone else is scurrying about. The contrast makes the slowness palpable. Rich. -- There's a tyranny in sunshine. In the endless possibilities. A whisper to do more and go farther. To drive places at high speed. The gift from the rain is to do less Don't speak Listen The gray is tired of carrying your airy empty words. -- My hair drips on my kindle screen as I my damp body lounges on the warm side of a cafe window. People are quiet and so my mind is quiet. The low rumble of shifting chairs and a shush of turning pages let me know I'm not alone. I look up from my book to watch rain-drops beading, then sliding down the window. I sip from a cup, poured from a shared pot of tea. Shared with a beacon of a girl. I can see her light clearly. -- I wish I could bottle up these indescribable reveries from all of the lives I didn't live and collect them on a shelf. In this life there's a single ball jar with a label made of masking tape. "Rain"