Rain.

and the rain, 

and the rain, it will wash away the pain,

wash away uncertainty

and make me clean again.

There are few things I love more than rain; summer rain, in particular.  When the torrent starts and the world grows suddenly dark, it's like my consciousness brings my soul into focus: every edge and shadow and highlight and line of what lies somewhere between head and heart sharpens with a snap.  Sssshwap....  Good mood, bad mood, feeling ecstatic, feeling blue, whatever the overall color and cadence of life, the rain pulls out the deeper wherefores.  It triggers a rapid recognition of the connection between self and humanity at large, between self and world, between self and destiny.

Okay, that sounds crazy.

Try this on for size:

Stuck in a car when the rain came down like buckets but the sun was still shining.  Morten Lauridsen's Dirait-on playing loud loud loud.  I didn't know what the French words meant in my head, but my heart got the gist, and the tears started with just as much gusto as the storm. 

Sitting on the screen porch at home in Atlanta under the lazy ceiling fan after a day of working in the yard.  Listening to the water start to drop from the heavens to the scorching summer earth.  And inhaling that warm, unmistakable smell of hot asphalt and hot magnolia blossoms and hot wood on the deck and hot crabgrass when they're suddenly doused with rainwater.  I look across at my father sitting in the old wicker chair bought sometime in the early 90's, and painted light green by mom somewhere in the mid 90's.  And suddenly, I'm full to bursting with Home.

College dorm room, Junior Year.  No roommate tonight, but the rain will keep me company.   Push that window open as far as possible, turn off all the lights, turn on Tim McGraw, and lay on top of the covers thinking about things that might be, and things that might never be, and breathe deep the uncertainty of life.  Learning to revel in uncertainty is a lesson that is hard to navigate, but of unparalleled importance.  Dreams may not always come true, but the real gem of experience is unearthed long before a positive or negative resolution.

Standing under a broken drain pipe in Sienna, willingly, foolishly, being soaked by the runoff of ancient cobblestones, hoping the Italianness will never completely dry out of my skin.

Driving into the middle of the marshes in Madison, CT, screaming and giggling with two good friends who each see a different side of me, but each know me.  Watching the lightning reach down to the sea from the sky and thinking "this isn't safe, this isn't safe, this isn't safe...but this is fantastic..."

Standing beneath the train tracks in Manayunk, seeking refuge from the freak rainstorm, posing for a picture with the kind of friend who doesn't care if you look like a wet rat - she only sees the you that glitters.

Running through the house and slamming shut all the windows, then returning to bed and leaving the window that aligns with the bedside open just a few inches.  Lay a towel on top of the mattress to catch the rain water that manages to squeeze past the screen, and lay an arm along the window, so that the filtered rain makes little splishes on my skin, washing away the uncertainties of yesterday, so that tomorrow my soul, like the sky, will be shining and clear.

photo: found online: Yauheni Attsetski

White Whimsy

A random collection of White.  Crispness, patriotism, purity, blank canvas, captured light, heightened shadows; it's a versatile color and evokes a variety of things...the possibilities are endless...

Images: (prepare yourselves...this is gonna be a long one)

LCT-Philadelphia Cherry Blossom Festival, 2009; LCT- Madison, CT Beach, 2009; LCT- Room Photo, 2009; Sails - Scottpargettphotography.com; Dress - Daisygreenmagazine.co.uk; Gardenias- Realsimple.com; LCT- Washington Monument, 2009; WinterWhimsy - Christine Capetta, 2009; Santorini, travelblog.org; LCT-Rosemont College, 2009; Lanterns - greenbydesign.com; LCT-Sheep at Atlanta Botanical Gardens, 2009; Sir Lawrence Alma Tadema, Expectations; LCT-Henry Moore Sculpture at Atlanta Botanical Gardens, 2009; John Singer Sargent, Fumee d'Ambre Gris ; LCT-Longwood Gardens, 2008.

There Are Also Musicians.

There Are Also Musicians

by Michael Coady

Though there are torturers in the world

There are also musicians.

Though, at this moment,

Men are screaming in prisons,

There are jazzmen raising storms

Of sensuous celebration,

And orchestras releasing

Glories of the Spirit.

Though the image of God 

Is everywhere defiled,

A man in West Clare

Is playing the concertina,

The Sistine Choir is levitating

Under the dome of St. Peter's,

And a drunk man on the road

Is singing, for no reason.

The power of music is an unmitigated one, constantly reinventing itself, molding and folding and empowering - affecting a single soul for a moment, or legions of souls for lifetimes.  When words cannot comfort you and reason can't sustain you, music is an offering to the Divine Conductor, a jaunt through His unwritten orchestrations.  It can give purpose without meaning, or meaning without purpose, as you close your eyes and feel the conduit between heaven and earth, present and past and future.  It's just...glorious.

Images: LCT - Street Musicians in Boulder, CO. 1999; shorpy.com, blind fiddler and musicians from 1935

Thought of the Day.

Growing where you are planted is overrated.

But while you're there, you should at least make an impression.

photo: LCT-Atlanta Botanical Gardens, 2009

Inspiration.

The sound of a great name dies like an echo;

The splendor of fame fades into nothing;

but the grace of a fine spirit pervades the places through which it has passed, 

like the haunting loveliness of a mignonette.

                                                                                            ~James Thurber

photo: LCT - Giardino di Boboli, Firenze, 2007.

Go West, Young Woman.

Impending Westward Expansion.  After a solid 26+ years living East of the Mississippi, some wild birdy landed on my shoulder and whispered in my ear and said, "Go West, Young Woman."  And so I shall.  I don't know what the destination is yet, but I know that the plan is simple: no plan.  It's time to shake up my world, to bite off more than I may be able to chew, to manufacture a challenge in self-confidence.  It's an exercise in Faith and Hope, muscles that are crying to be flexed, even if they end up aching a little.

And it's a long time coming.  I remember discovering Albert Bierstadt at a young age - the age when most landscapes seemed boring.  Bierstadt and the Hudson River Valley painters were not boring.  They gazed upon the great, wild, raw power of the west and brought it east, replicated in rich oil and rolled canvas, to give civilization a glimpse of what can never be harnessed.  I most love the powerful dichotomy of the mountains coexisting with the sweet details in the foreground - if you get close enough, you can see the rabbits and the bugs upon the rushes.  

Oh to be Alice and to step through to the other side.

Summer Flashback

I found this image the other day and it drew me backward through the years.  In the thick summer days of the south, I would spend hours lying on the lawn beneath a pink umbrella, reading, with a tutu on my head.  (...no doubt one of the earliest signs of impending quirkiness.)

So here's to the carefree days of childhood, may they never fully fade.  And here's to the sultry days of summer, because firefly-catching through the ivy and swinging in the hammock while the crickets and cicadas come out to play are palpable snippets of life.  And here's to the mad ones, on the road for somewhere beyond the horizon.

photo: Sidonie, found in Photo Club de Louviers,