XXVI

I turned 26 years old today.  The skies poured out an abundance of gentle and constant rain, and watching it from the large windows of my office building brought a settled sense of acceptance.  I love how life giving rain is, the way it draws out the vibrancy of foliage, clears and cools the air, and refuses to be impeded by any sort of barrier, especially those that are manmade.  Today it fell softly, yet without any sort of hesitancy, falling from the sky with a marked sense of purpose to join into small rivers throughout the city.  Lightning burst a few times, brilliantly flashing, and reinforcing its boldness without reserve in resounding thunder.

And I feel this first day of a new age fits me right now.  Gray, dim, subdued, all over the place, wet, constant, with instances of astoundingly powerful intensity, potential, somewhat uncomfortable if you are ill prepared, unavoidable.  Its a good start.  This birthday has been extremely minimal--no candles, no confections, no wrapping paper, no balloons--and the starkness of it has given me a lot of clarity and helped me think.  My life is so different from what I envisioned.  Ever.  Who I am is so different than who I thought I would become.  It is beautiful, the depth of it all, and I'm not sure what will happen next, but rain is restorative.  And this stage of my life is too.  Somehow.

I'm with Gerard Manley Hopkins.  SEND MY ROOTS RAIN.  Let these roots, these delicate yet resilient united fibers thirsting for nourishment, receive rain.  Let them find what they need and send those sustaining elements up through the rest of me to reorganize themselves into branches, shoots, leaves, buds, blossoms.  But before all of that can happen, send my roots rain.

'Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend'

Justus quidem tu es, Domine, si disputem tecum; verumtamen 

justa loquar ad te: Quare via impiorum prosperatur? &c. 

Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend 

With thee; but, sir, so what I plead is just. 

Why do sinners’ ways prosper? and why must 

Disappointment all I endeavour end? 

    Wert thou my enemy, O thou my friend, 

How wouldst thou worse, I wonder, than thou dost 

Defeat, thwart me? Oh, the sots and thralls of lust 

Do in spare hours more thrive than I that spend, 

Sir, life upon thy cause. See, banks and brakes 

Now, leavèd how thick! lacèd they are again 

With fretty chervil, look, and fresh wind shakes 

Them; birds build – but not I build; no, but strain, 

Time’s eunuch, and not breed one work that wakes. 

Mine, O thou lord of life, send my roots rain.