It’s Not Ruined, It’s Just Rained On
A little retrospective of the past week: riding in the rain, remixing perspectives, and a reminder to tell the peeps you love you that you love them. Right now! Do it!
Angel numbers keep catching my eye. How thoughtful that my ancestors show up to affirm in this way. For example, on Monday I fell asleep to ringing bowls reverberating in my heart, in my pelvis, and woke at 5:55 on the dot to the diffuse orange and pink sun announcing itself softly through the trees. That evening, I checked the time again: 5:55.
Is it what you choose to notice, or is it an invisible force pulling you towards your self again and again? Either way, I don’t care, but I choose to think of it as guidance — wherever it comes from, deep inside me or in the nameless sky, ancestors is a word, is a concept that covers it all.
Who is that woman on the swing in bright yellow overalls, a little spot of sun, a sun of her own making, looking out onto the ripples dimpling the lake, avoiding all conversation just to be in the romance of her own head?
These days my phone is quiet. It used to be brimming with texts but now that society is largely mask-less and summer is undeniable, we’ve all slipped back into the water of our lives.
I can’t say I’m mad at it, I’m glad my friends are swimming, biking, skating, dancing, making art, making love, addressing their demons, gaining momentum in the unfolding stories of their own lives. It leaves me room to do the same.
Also, it seems now when the inbox fills it is bizarre how uncanny the timing for a message of love, dropping out of the blue right when really needed — three in a row, so very touching, so unexpected!
What propelled you to send this? I asked one of the generous senders. I loved his answer: “I was drunk and telling my boyfriend how grateful I am to be your friend!”
Ha!
Send someone an unexpected text full of appreciation.
Do it right now before you forget!
(But by far the best message, received while traveling away from home:
You are a dream that is ongoing for me.
That one made me cry.)
Sunday I got caught in what I think is what they mean by cats and dogs raining on the bike path. It sounds lovely, doesn’t it? Biking by the river and the rain runs down the cheeks, the neck, the knees, so gentle and quenching on the most humid of days.
But no, this rain was hard and it hurt, the wind throwing the water against my skin as if pellets of rice whipped by the invisible hand of a pitcher. Just get to the underpass I told myself on repeat, eyes half closed and peering through blurry lenses. I was alternatively groaning and laughing as the wind bully shoved me about.
Under the tunnel where cars zoomed above our heads, all the cyclists gathered waiting for the storm to pass. Our little community of strangers standing silent in a kinship of spokes and handle bars. I was soaked through and through and now out of the rain’s grasp, the cool against my skin became a welcome relief. Too was our quiet togetherness. My heart was open for once and not my mouth, nor even my ears for that matter.
In my canvas bag, somehow, my notebook was spared ruin by the downpour. I was sure it would be unusable by the time I got home but it was no more damaged than when my water bottle unlatched itself a few weeks back.
When that incident happened, I wanted to toss the book in the trash but The Jazz held me back — it’s lived in but not dead he said, and he was right, rough around the edges, unkempt, but still available to keep my words safe. Let it serve its purpose to the fullest extent. Don’t give up on something so easily, Caits.
You know:
Look at something sideways, then upside down before you make a decision.
Don’t throw away the day when it rains!!
Mistakes make for a lived-in life, don’t they though?
Most things aren’t ruined, they just need some tenderness and care.
You might need some tenderness. Your heart is not ruined, I promise.
Make something old new.
I think about this directive quite often. We live in a time of remix: the collage art form, THE SAMPLE! We should be recycling — plastic, of course, but also, our own words, our relationships, our art. Like me, Alan Ginsberg pulled old phrases from his notebook to piece poems together. Frank Ocean makes his lyrics with a fragmented, collaged style. Who can argue with the tactic now?
I’m thinking of this because the Verve Remixed albums are really sensational, and I remembered just how so when I listened to Speak Low by Billie Holiday and immediately had to find the Bent remix. I was transported upon listening to the lush, moody track to a school bus many years ago, where I sat with my cheek against the window, surrounded by sleeping high school students.
Join the scene: my pants were wet around the ankles from the rain I scurried through long before the sun rose. I was chaperoning a field trip to another city, and I burrowed deep into Billie’s voice layered with rain, playing it on repeat while the weak sun ambled into the world, defeated. I was trying my hand at some fiction, though it was poor because I was not being honest, and was using the format for the wrong reasons.
Here is what I wrote: a vignette about an ex-boyfriend. It wasn’t kind. It made me, I mean the character, the hero. I was no hero in this context. In the little story, the ex-boyfriend character swallows a small gold heart-shaped locket that once belonged the not-me character’s. I thought the metaphor was profound. It was cheesy.
Funny story though. That series of vignettes, as poorly crafted as they were, did find their way back into my repertoire. A few have been repurposed as poems, a few made it into my comic zine.
Don’t throw anything away — I don’t mean junk in your house, I mean psychologically, creatively. You really never know when it will resurface in just the right context, and produce gold with just a bit of elbow grease.
Also, check out the tune “Reading a Wave” from the album ZEBRA by Arp. Magical. The Jazz said he rode his bike to it and it felt like being in a dream. I’m gonna try it on the way home today!
