LA LLUVIA

Apart from the odd drizzle here and there - nothing you could really call rain - I hadn't experienced the sensations of that particular natural phenomenon for the better part of seven months; the sound of muffled raindrops on the forest floor, the chaos of water battering a tin roof or the opportunity to hang my tongue out to catch water falling from above, my face angled skyward.

And when it came again as I stood on the beach in the late afternoon, I wished it would never end. Two hours later and back at a friend's place I found myself lying on a deck chair as the deluge threw waves of rain over my body. It felt like some sort of spritual cleansing.

Here I sit, a few days later, on an old wooden chair under the shelter of a rusty tin roof above the clouds in San José del Pacifico. A small detour from the Oaxacan coast means palm trees and coconuts are replaced by pine needles, moss and lichen. And the rain, thunder and lightning.

It's been eight or nine months with the coast by my side. As much as the ocean makes up a large part of who I am and how I see myself, it does not constitute the whole. So here I sit on my wooden chair as the rain performs its intricate harmonies on the roof a metre or two above my head. What a pleasure it truly is to see the shapes raindrops draw in the rapidly forming puddles scattered across the ground. I'm left transfixed by a diverse form of moving water. I'd been watching the ocean for countless hours during my journey south. I'd forgotten how encapsulating rain could be.

I remember reading of Australian farmers as they spoke of the first rains after the crippling droughts that rippled across our country not so long ago; of toddlers crying from fear  as the heavens opened - something they'd never seen before. How must rain have felt for those families?

I imagine it must have been a salvation unlike any other. For these resilient people rain equates to life. It does for every one of us. For rain, like many other things in our world, reminds us how reliant we are on our earth for everything we have. It reminds us of the vast web of which we humans are but one single thread. If that thread is removed, the web may still function as well as before. The web lives on but that thread is gone forever.

The raindrops continue to fall, the intensity of the downpour building into crescendos before fading away again. The rhythm resembles the rising and falling of wave energy; of the continous peaks and troughs. I remain seated, captivated by the show.

 

I think it’s worth mentioning that this piece, once finished, was read aloud accompanied by light rain and some soulful backing guitar played by Andrew as we looked at the view before us. Sebastian then read a poem aloud, and once he’s finished editing it I’ll endeavour to put it here also.