Rain

Let me explain myself here:

Everyone who knows me even casually (e.g. the shuttle driver to campus, angry hobos I avoid, the friendly chap who built our fence, porch, and kitchen) knows that I love the rain.  My friends get annoyed with my references to it, and OMFG...poor B.  I've gone off about how it hasn't rained enough lately so many times in her presence that when I start in, she delivers a seriously-shut-up glare that could make Rush Limbaugh turn off his microphone.* 

I am feeling kind of nostalgic and emotional-in-a-good-way and it's raining right now and I want to say why I love it so much.  It's because rain for me is equivalent to life itself.  There's the obvious part - it makes everything grow, it provides for our species to keep on being a species for the time being, and so on.  There's also my subjective position and, I serpose, philosophical position, that I love Oregon because it's green here, because the rivers are huge, because most of the year you're stomping around in a sweater and a jacket (which makes everyone look cooler than they would in California crap), and ultimately because Oregon seethes with something like good "energy" in the hippie sense.  This place is defined by the rain, and I get worked-up when it doesn't rain enough because (A.) it makes me think about mortality**, and (B.) I fear more than anything Oregon losing its identity, losing its core.  There's no evidence that that's going to happen, it's just that this place is so precious to me that the idea of a de-Oregonized Oregon terrifies me.

So keep raining, sky.  Despite what everyone else says.

* This is a good idea, and I will start trying to come up with a way that B can deliver this glare to that particular pile of reheated shit.
** Honestly...lack of rain makes me think about being dead.  Welcome to my psyche.