Gentle Rain

Gentle rain is very calming. It's overcast now and the downspouts empty their contents in a stream. The stream is steady now. There is no noise outside but the gentle rain. A distant dog barks. I hear him no more. I'm feeling sleepy.

I'm in this black wood framed chair. It rocks me gently, slightly. It could put me to sleep like a baby in his mother's arms. This iBook is warm in my lap. My palms rest on the eggshell colored support near the keyboard.

I can click on the browser and be anywhere in an instant, but I wont, I don't. I want to be right here. In the moment, spewing text from this machine and posting it out to the world. What contentment. An umbilical connection to my friends, regardless of their location. I can communicate easily, quickly, or even not at all. Umbilical connection. This is why the blog is so popular. It goes back to connections. Connections with friends. Friends that may be very far away, but still connections.

And so I type and not sleep like my body tells me I should. The rain falls gently. The shutters are drawn like eye lids over windows of the soul. The sounds of the keyboard are all I hear. And I rock ever so gently. Eyes closing now, then they force themselves open to finish this post. What's a post without the final signature and quote? It's no post at all. And so I close. Close this post for sleep. Sleep induced by gentle rain.

...dave
"'I love walking in the rain, 'cause then no-one knows im crying'" -Anonymous

Storm Power

It's hard to think about anything else to write about other than the storm that pounds Florida as I sit here. Just outside the rain comes, the wind shuffles the trees like a dealer at a black jack table. But here I sit, comfy at my writing desk, enjoying the warm glow of the floor lamp and dry carpet under my feet. But every angry blow outside I shutter at the thought of 120 mph winds that others are experiencing.

We just came back from a Barns & Noble bookstore. The rain was light when we left. Just as we got inside the rain moved across the parking lot in vertical sheets of water. Even from the inside it sounds like a war zone. The rain pelted the roof so loud I couldn't hear the music. It reached a loud crescendo and quieted a little girl making noise in the next isle over. Yet people were lounging, casually reading books in the safe harbor of the book nooks. Meanwhile, folks in Florida hold on for dear life. The only inconvenience I experienced in our little jaunt to the bookstore was some raindrops on my head.

This storm is huge. While it hits Pensacola Florida at the gulf, the rain spreads clear up north through Atlanta Georgia and east over to Savannah on the coast.

The pictures above are not actual pictures of the storm. I found these on weather.com. They may give us some idea of what the Floridians may be experiencing.

Wait! I just went and checked weather.com and found this actual picture (the last one shown) of the storm coming ashore in Florida. You can find it here. The blurb reads: The attack of Dennis. The first bands hit St. Andrews Bay in Panama City, Florida. Photo taken: 7/9/2005 by Jerry Lewis.

...dave
Rainbows apologize for angry skies. -Sylvia Voirol

Hard Rain

It's an early Sunday morning. My body clock gets up at 6:00, whether it's a weekday or a weekend. It doesn't know well enough to let me sleep in. So I get up, shower, shave and get some tea. Ah, White Tip Earl Grey tea. There is nothing better.

The rain has started. Our little home is draped with water. The rain is so heavy I feel like a spider under a tub spout. The water comes as if someone just turned it on. I peeked out of the window not minutes ago and all was dry. Now it sounds like I am standing next to Niagara Falls, intense, constant, and heavy. But then, as quick as it came, it'll lighten enough for me to hear the hollow downspouts echo the downpour on a smaller scale. I spoke to soon, the heavy water returns again.

The next wave of heavy water pours now, as if a tug boat pulling a freighter is passing by, and I'm in a small boat dowsed by the huge wave. The flood engulfs our subdivision like a bucket on an ant colony. It's a dark stormy morning.

This is a stay-in kind of morning. It's a day for reading, study, and writing.

Who wants to go out in this whether? I need another cup of tea.

...dave
Criticism, like rain, should be gentle enough to nourish a man's growth without destroying his roots. -Frank A. Clark