Friday Ramble - Swimming in Light

We awakened to gray skies yesterday, to rain reveling in its own refrain and beating a staccato rhythm on the roof that shunned meter and metronome. Puckish breezes cavorted in the eaves and ruffled tiny leaves in the garden like tangy decks of playing cards. A thousand and one little waterfalls appeared out of nowhere, and impromptu streams danced their way through village gutters carrying twigs, oak leaves, pine needles and catkins.

Here and there were precious islands of stillness. Sheltered by overhanging trees, the ornamental pond in a friend's garden was like glass, its little school of white and scarlet koi hovering almost motionless in the early light, their open mouths like tiny perfect "o"s. Sometimes, they seemed to be swimming in light.

On our morning walk, we (Beau and I) took note of a rusty puddle under the corroded wheelbarrow in a neighbor's driveway, and I remembered that humans have been using rust (iron oxides) in artistic undertakings as far back as the prehistoric caves of Lascaux. I would be a happy camper indeed if I ever managed to produce something a scrap as vibrant as the magnificent Chinese horse.

I also remembered that a heady brew of iron oxides, carbon dioxide and water is probably where all sentient life began. The Japanese word for rust is sabi and together with wabi, another Japanese word meaning fresh or simple, it forms the expression wabi-sabi, an enfolding aesthetic or worldview centered on notions of transience, simplicity and naturalness or imperfection. Rust is fine stuff, be it in aesthetics, Asian philosophy, cave art, wet driveways or old wheelbarrows.

Clouds and rain, then sunshine and blue sky, then back to clouds and rain again, who knows what mid-May days will hold? When good weather prevails, Beau and I go into the woods, and we lurch along for an hour or two, a long way from the miles of rugged terrain we were once able to cover, but there is gratitude in every step.

On wet days, we listen to a little Bach or Rameau on the sound system, read and drink tea. We watch raindrops dappling the windows, the painterly way in which trees, little rivers and old wood fences are beaded with moisture and shining in the grey. Each and every raindrop is a minuscule world teeming with exuberant life, whole universes looking up at us, great and bumbling creatures that we are. Rain or shine, up and down, in and out, them and us, it's all good.