Thursday, June 23, 2011

The Rain Used to Make Sense

This is Ireland:

You will wake up at 7am because the sun is shining so brightly behind your curtains that it makes your room look as if the lights are on even though they aren't. You will roll over and close your eyes, think, 'just a few minutes more.' You will then be plunged into darkness again as thunderclouds roll over the sun, and you will fall back asleep in spite of yourself.
You'll wake up at 9am to rain falling on one side of the house, but not on the other. Confusingly, the side of the house that is being rained on is also bathed in sunlight, whereas the side with no rain is covered by clouds.
The rain will stop, but the clouds will remain, but you chance it and go outside. It will be reasonably warm, but 10 minutes later, a bitter wind will start to blow and you'll run inside. Half an hour later, you'll hear sounds on the roof, look out the skylight and see that it is hailing.
2 hours later, the sun will be out again, and you'll head outside in just a singlet, because by now, its scorching. You go for a walk, but an hour later, you're shivering and the clouds are black, so you run home before the rain starts again and rug up in your warmest clothes. Half an hour later, the sun will be out again, but you've been tricked before, so you stay inside. You watch small patches of cloud come and go, and you know the sun is mocking you for hiding inside. Its sunny all afternoon. So, that evening, after dinner, you'll go for a walk in the bright, bright sun, but, suddenly, out of nowhere, apparently because you've come outside, it will start to rain. You look around for the clouds, but they are nowhere to be seen. Where is the rain coming from? You convince yourself that it must be a sprinkler, not rain, and continue to walk. The rain gets heavier, and the sun gets brighter. You begin to think you are in some sort of mind game, some sort of postmodern, philosophical mind-fuck, like the end of 'Sophie's World', where you're not sure who's fiction, who's the author, what you're supposed to believe in, and maybe the rain is just a figment of the collective imagination that knows Ireland to be a rainy country and so brings the rain out of nowhere, out of sheer belief, just to keep up appearances.
Then the rain will stop, you'll look up into the sky, and there will be a sunset so beautiful that if someone was to paint it in its true colours, people would call it tacky and sentimental, but when its there in front of you, in real life, it is heart-achingly beautiful and inspiring. There will be four or five levels of different types of clouds in the sky, in different colours of peach, pink and yellow, and you go to bed full of optimism for the next day, which will surely be better weather-wise than this one, I mean, just look how the clouds have cleared up....

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