Confession No. 1: Rainsanity

I love the rain.

I don't know why but there's that strange and irrepressible feeling deep inside every time the sky gets dark and the clouds burst with water. It makes the world a little less dangerous for someone perpetually inflicted with chronic sentimentality like me.

I always like to consider rain as my element. It is during this time that I get to infuse sanity in a world gone mad and so confusing you need a break from the 'routinary'. I'm at my prime (or becomes incurably cheesy) every time I hear the rain battering the roof or the ground, or step outside and open my mouth for a few drops as I relish the cold enveloping the atmosphere.

As the rain conquers everything around and suspends the normal, I get to stuck myself with the realization that there is something more real to this ephemeral existence. That the world as we know it is not really "it". That you can not come to terms with your life until you close your eyes and quiet the confusion around you and within you. Ah, to make sense of the world!

And yeah, who knows, that as the rain fills and cements the cracks in the dry ground, it would also fill the human heart with hope and heal its brokenness. Do you get that? Or is that too cheesy? LOL.

Dancing Crystals

(Throwback. Poem dated June 2006. And all because it's raining the whole day today and I'm stuck in the house. Cheers!)


I open my hands
          trembling on every beat
      getting numb on every swing
             of the cold and bewildering
            dancing crystals
                that were sent from the heavens
      to wash away the dirt
               and brokenness and hurt
                        from this abandoned soul...

       I stand still
my feet firm on the ground
               felt the stern soil
                     becomes soft and muddy
            I struggled to face
      the darkened skies
                        billowing clouds above...

My eyes feel the pain
        yet fell on a trance
            deep and profound
                        that I can't resist...

I close my eyes
       internalized the beat
        and I let my tired heart
    succumb to the rhythm
                 and dance in the rain...

Here's to the Rain

The heavy pounding of rain on the corrugated metal roof of our house literally woke me up from my senses. For a moment, the grogginess I felt inside wasn’t able to comprehend the exact mayhem around me—feeling disoriented about the space and time I am currently in. If it’s not other-worldly then what is?

Nah! Was it just me or the tangible coldness gradually building up in the atmosphere as humidity fills the air? Was it the thought of being alone in the house, lying on my bed on a Saturday afternoon, and wasting away precious time, which made me apprehensive of my own temporal existence?

Earlier this morning, I tried to jam-pack my weekend to-do lists by trying to accomplish them simultaneously, but all at the same time. Read: IMPOSSIBLE. And since it seemed like I have mastered the craft of procrastination then I have to endure its bitter consequence, chief of them disorienting my cerebral cortex—or whatever is left of it.

I was trying to get a grip on myself as I was preparing for a message that I will deliver tomorrow in the Youth service. The topic is about wisdom and I still can’t figure out why I was so eager to preach it when in fact I’m the one person on earth who really, really needs it. Well, that’s not modesty; I’m just plain honest to myself. But isn’t it the thirsty ones who know where to look for water to drink? Isn’t it the hungry ones who basically find the food? Isn’t it the needy for answers and reason that finds them in the end? Well, these thoughts really make me feel uneasy.

By lunch time, still no one is at home but me. With my sermon outline still unfinished and having no available food to eat, I decided to devour a book—a habit I gotten used to when I need someone around but finds none. Books are a constant companion for me, especially when I need a breather, when I need escape.

This one I’m currently reading is really about writing though. It is a Christian literature written by the author of the bestselling Left Behind series, Jerry Jenkins. I picked it up yesterday in the random shelves of Booksale and thought that it might help since I am also in the process of rethinking my life. Trying to find significance (oh please, here we go again!). Yeah, I’m not still giving up my dream of becoming a writer and journalist; but for the meantime let me have the time of my life writing contents for blogs and pseudo-blogs: stringing words that no one really care about, trying to pretend somebody in the vast universe is reading them and making them wonder what’s all these crap all about? Who knows, I might be sending a message to some cosmic intelligence out there, and might be able to prevent a flurry of chaos on earth. Haha. I’m sorry, but I’m not really into fiction. Although sometimes, my life is.

I planned to spend the rest of the afternoon in bed after falling asleep while watching a lecture on globalization and foreign policy on my cellphone. These lectures, as I learned in the great halls of the graduate school, are truly very useful. They have this distinct downing effect that allows me to get the benefit of a good night’s sleep.
 

And then the rain came.

Splattering with all its might, knocking off my sweet dreams and disturbing my hibernation. I went outside to witness the transformation of the scene around me. It was half past two in the afternoon and the sun was missing. Dark clouds still heavy with rain hover above the rows of mahogany trees and acacia trees of Lingap Kalikasan Park, our place of comfort, my place of sanity.

The chilled air and the smell of freshly wet earth reminds me of a childhood in a barrio in my beloved Pangasinan: half-naked and barefooted, I would scamper around the neighborhood with other kids; relishing the moment of freedom that the rain has given. With raindrops pounding on our bodies, we ran and ran in the green fields and mud fields, doing somersaults on wet haystacks, plunging into irrigation canals and mocking one another while savoring pure bliss on our paper boat races.

This was our moment. And we own the world with our laughter and childish fascinations.

But man, enough with the reminiscences! I still have a sermon to finish, a book to digest, and piles of student papers to check. But the rain was so inviting. I always like to claim that water is my element although I never really liked swimming. Especially rain, there’s something in it that fascinates me. The way it transforms the surroundings, the way it gives life to something that needs it.

The child in me tells me something. Forget the sermon outline for the meantime, forget the book, forget the things that bother, and jump in the rain.

And I did. And all the world again was mine.