There’s just something about water in south Mississippi
We hadn’t had a prettyday in two weeks, and mush is exactly
what I felt like. In the South we say
“prettyday” as all one word. A prettyday
is quite definable in the South. It
always happens after a good rain when everything returns to a lush rich green
shade and the sky is the clearest baby blue with a few wispy cirrus clouds
thrown in for good measure. And a
prettyday always has a light, constant breeze.
If there’s no wind, then it’s not a prettyday because the South is
absolutely suffocating without God’s fan—regardless of the season.
But it’s been weeks seen we’d seen any other color but grey
in our sky, and it was wearing on the Southern hospitality in everyone. Grey and rain made every one talk a bit
lower. They were laughing less, talking
as if it pained them, just generally shuffling through their day, unwilling to
look up from the puddles at their feet.
Their foundations were turning to mush. I could see it even if they couldn’t. It comes from having too much time to think
and not enough to do to keep you from it.
It was wearing me out—the avoiding my own thoughts. I can only guess what it was doing to
everyone else.
Funny how rain makes everyone want to go home and
sleep. It’s as if our prehistoric wiring
short circuits our modern day notions of being productive from first alarm buzz
in the morning to last light out at night.
Like we should rest—or have sex—since there’s nothing else you can do in
the field when water pours down from the sky.
But staying home, hiding under the covers, only makes me think in grand
style. Makes me ponder deep thoughts,
wander down fanciful paths of stories and plots and creation. That’s what happens when I’m home alone in
the rain. I think. And I’m left exhausted from the work the next
day.
