June 07, 2007

Wet and Dry

It started raining, you know. And it didn’t stop for several weeks. I bet we lost . . . oh, I don’t know, thirty birds. Some sheep. And some other important stuff. It just, well, everything was wet. It just got wet and started to rot. And then pretty much all we talked about was. . . the water. Cause, you know, there was water in everything. All in our thoughts, in our dreams, there was just water in everything.

At first we tried to enjoy it. Then we tried to protect ourselves from it. Then we tried to collect it - tried to use it. Then we tried to ignore it. Then we got sick of it. We tried to learn to live with it but we couldn’t. I mean we did, but it wasn’t easy. But it wasn’t easy before that either. And it hasn’t been easy since.

When you’ve got something like that in your life, something that’s just unbelievable, like you’ve never come across and can’t even really believe, well you usually get more religious. Spiritual at least. And you begin to read more of -whatever you have at hand that deals in that sort of thing. You begin to see the world in a more simple way. Wet and dry. And you begin to think about building boats to carry you over the water and towers that you could live in above the rain. You begin to think about confession and prayer and you just get more holy, and more aware - of holy things. Every word, every voice, everything you ever knew, just sounds completely different in the rain.

from "The Deluge"