While I enjoy the friendship of the seasons I trust that nothing can make life a burden to me. The gentle rain which waters my beans and keeps me in the house today is not drear and melancholy, but good for me too. Though it prevents my hoeing them, it is of far more worth than my hoeing. If it should continue so long as to cause the seeds to rot in the ground and destroy the potatoes in the low lands, it would still be good for the grass on the uplands, and, being good for the grass, it would be good for me.
– from Walden by Henry David Thoreau
Tonight I turned my computer off for a little while so my room was completely silent. Again, the soft patter of rain outside was the most calming thing I could imagine. I have been on edge recently with so much to do. Tonight I'm worried about my nonfiction essay, which I've left untouched for far too long. Instead of writing, though, I sat in bed with my ear to the open window and only the light of my desklamp keeping me awake. Just listening was beneficial.
The rain adds another dimension to the way I perceive distance. Instead of a car passing, I hear a car splashing through a film of water on the road, and passing under raindrops which drum on its roof and smack the ground in all directions. The rain is loudest close-at-hand, singing more and more softly with the distance. The layers paint a blurry aural picture in my mind: the physical plant, the river, the highway, and home – nothing seems far away. The world is fuller when it rains, and the connection between all life is more obvious. Everything benefits from rain: the birds and the squirrels and the feral cats and the grass and my jade and me. I am less lonely now.