A Rainy Valley Day

Rain symbolizes multiple things depending on the context in which it appears, but most commonly connotes sadness, rejection or despair... Because rain is a common natural occurrence vital for life, rainfall can also represent rebirth and emotional cleansing.

Today, in the Valley...  that is to say the TN Valley...  it has been raining for two days...  so, do I need to invest in some treated lumber and build an Ark?  Or, am I just being factious? 

Being an English Major in College, I spent a lot of time reading a variety of literary works and analyzing their content using a variety of methodologies, one of which was symbolism...  and the author's use of rain or some kind of flowing water.

Interestingly, The Bible uses rain as well in the form of a GREAT FLOOD that covered the land supposedly to rid the world of evil people, so that the descendants of Noah could repopulate the world.  Supporting the Great Flood Biblical Story is the fact that IN ALL OTHER GLOBAL MYTHOLOGIES, there is mention of a Great Flood that explained a variety of justifications.  Needless to say, all of them in one way or another depicted a CLEANSING of the WORLD so that a new and better society could be rebuilt.

MEANWHILE...

my porch door is open to allow the cool weather to enter the house rather than use electricity to power our air conditioning unit.  There is no need to actually need electricity when there is not a need to do so.

Taking advantage of this rainy day, we have decided to drive to the big city of Knoxville and do a little shopping since we cannot spent anytime outside today.

Saturday in the Valley

I woke up this morning to the sounds of rain outside my window and felt the immediate congestion inside my head specifically around my sinuses...  one of the pitfalls of living in East TN.  But, for me the advantages out-weigh the disadvantages...  especially at my age where sights and sounds are worrisome. 

As an English major in College, I am very familiar with the symbol of rain in literature...  and, is omnipresent in both prose and poetry to create the proper mental environment among the readers and the critics.  Whenever you have literature present, you have a whole host of critics who like to criticize writers for not writing as they would have expected them to write.

But, college has been behind me for over 50 years and I simply don't give a shit anymore what the critics may or may not think...  Rain, is a necessary evil in the South, especially in the Valley where a little rain is so necessary for survival.

I just mowed my lawn and with this rain and lots of sunny days after the weekend, no doubt I will have to mow my lawn again once maybe twice before the week is over...  While it is not that annoying to mow since I daydream while mowing, it does take time and money...  and, gasoline is not necessarily cheap anymore.

Once it warms up a tad, I plan to put on a sweatshirt and go out on my screened in back porch and listen to the rain for an hour or two...  for me, it is just as relaxing as sitting in my hot tub for 20 minutes.

Unfortunately, I only started learning to relax after I retired in 2015...  perhaps, if I had learned to do this earlier, I would not have experienced a heart attack...  who knows?

What Does RAIN Symbolize?

The Symbolism of Rain – 7 Examples in Movies & Books
By Chris Drew, PhD

The symbolism of rain varies across different types of literature and movies.

It has been used as a symbol for many thousands of years, perhaps most notably in the floods in the bible.

Rain can symbolize many things. It can represent unhappiness, rebirth, foreboding, determination, the breaking of a drought, and a pause for introspection.

Here are some examples of how rain is employed as a literary device.
1. Unhappiness and Melancholy
2. Ominous Foreboding
3. Rebirth and Renewal
4. Romance
5. Determination
6. A Pause for Introspection
7. Cleansing

1. Unhappiness and Melancholy
Rain often washes over a scene when the protagonist in a film, TV show or literature is ‘awash’ with sadness.

This may be because rain is oppressive. The clouds that it comes with lock out light and the warmth of the sun. It prevents us from going outdoors to enjoy nature. It literally makes our days grayer and darker.

When a character is sad or moody, rainy weather is often employed as a way of showing how the world is empathizing with the character.

An example is in the book Great Expectations. Pip narrates:

…stormy and wet, stormy and wet; and mud, mud, mud, deep in all the streets. Day after day, a vast heavy veil had been driving over London from the East, and it drove still, as if in the East there were an Eternity of cloud and wind. … gloomy accounts had come in from the coast, of shipwreck and death. Violent blasts of rain had accompanied these rages of wind, and the day just closed as I sat down to read had been the worst of all.

Here, Pip is outlining how the weather is mirroring his gloomy feeling as he spends his days depressed in London.

2. Ominous Foreboding
Rain may also symbolize foreboding. In fact, this symbolism often parallels the use of rain as a sign of melancholy – because the rain is indicating that there are no good prospects to come. There are “dark clouds on the horizon”. Indeed, it can often take place in the final scene of a move that we know will not end well.  READ MORE

Changing Forecast

In just a day or two since last I looked, the weather forecast has changed from sunny all week to rain today and tomorrow and sunny for the rest of the week...  and, on the surface of it all...  that really does not bother me because all I want to do (especially before it gets too humid to do so) is sit on my screened-in back porch and write articles for my blogs and perhaps write down a poem or two as the mood strikes me...

Rain...  and depending upon how it falls will cause me to return to the insides of our home...  and, I know the commercials on television recently make a big deal about home...  being inside one's home is not the same as being outside in the fresh air...  I guess because we have been inside the home all winter and need to get outside.

The weather station is reporting a temperature of 65 degrees for our area and while that is good for T-shirts and sandals, I am sitting on my deck with a T-shirt covered with a sweatshirt hoody...  as it feels a lot damn colder than 65.

I was planning to mow the lawn later tonight but with the rain and the cool temps for the next 2 days, I doubt if I'll be able to mow it by late Thursday night...  which is not good because then I have a bunch of grass clippings that need to be disposed and that is extra work...  I don't mind work...  but extra work is BS.

I am on my second YETI mug of coffee...  each mug holds 3 cups, so when this one is gone, I will have consumed 6 cups of coffee and ordinarily, I would be wired...  but, my coffee intake these days is DECAF...  which takes like piss or what I might imagine piss to take like since I have not really tasted piss myself...  but, after several years of drinking DECAF, one gets used to it and now regular coffee does not taste right.

I Must Be Crazy

I can see my reflection on the monitor screen as my laptop boots us...  an old face, deep set brown eyes with wrinkles at the corners,  a grey toboggan covering my head and forehead under the hood of a heavy duty, fleeced lined sweatshirt zippered half way up...  even though my laptop is 5 years old it still boots up rather quickly and instantly I am connected to the internet as if someone had played a magic trick on me...  wool socks with leather soles are on both feet and except for my hands, I feel rather warm and toasty to be sitting outside on my back porch deck in weather less than 40...  

A light rain makes concentric rings as it hits standing water and for a moment or two, I watch them disperse and disappear as other drops of rain takes their place in my time and space...  a cooling cup of coffee in a paper cup from McD's is on my left side with McCafe spelled out in brown letters...  our fat (due to steroids for congestion) yellow cat joins me on the deck wanting to continue its way outside but changes his mind when he sees all the rain...  and, the heat from all my clothes makes me sweat a little and for another moment I wonder how long it will be before I decide to go back inside and quit enjoying all this nice weather...

On the other side of my deck rails are the stumps of the bushes I cut down about 2-3 feet above the ground and while I cannot see them from my vantage point, I am just as confident that they are still there as I am that they will again grow tall in the spring of this new year...  a 4X4 treated post stands firm in the ground and supports a blue bird house I made out of the old decking I replaced this year and while there are no inhabitants, I have seen a couple checking it out as a possibility...

Neighbor's leaves have once again blown into my back yard and as soon as it stops raining and the grass dries out, I will again mow that area for the third time...  and, while it is a tad annoying to do this each year, it does help my grass grow strong...  and, as I stop to reflect upon it all, I notice the rain is still falling and the sounds that it makes when it hits an object seems to be getting stronger and stronger...  as if the rain is going to replace the early snow that feel a few days ago...  and, even though it did not last that long on the ground, it was still early and not being a farmer, I have no way of knowing if that is a good sign or not...

And...  while it may seem a little funny to you or even weird, I still do not feel the least bit cold...  not even my bare typing fingers...  the rain has decided to increase and there is no doubts about it...  falling like it does during a typical summer shower...   and, while this is good for the 3 new spots that we sowed grass seed, it is not good for the one task that I was going to perform outside today...  and, while its delay will not bother me...  it will bother the other resident who lives in this house with me...

My second cup of coffee tastes as good as the first and I am not sure what I am doing, if anything, differently to have all this good luck...  but, it would appear that the rain is starting to subside and I really must go and start what I need to do so I can finish before this cup of coffee gets cold...

Disrespect For Limits Causes Accidents/Deaths

An early morning scheduled PET-CT Scan had me up at 5:00 am and on the road by 5:30 am since I could not eat or drink anything 6 hours before my arrival time of 6:30 am...  This morning, it was dark, foggy as best as I could tell, and raining as if Trump had won the election and the world was going to end.  Usually, I drive with one hand on the wheel, but today I had both hands and could feel the vehicle sliding a little to both sides as the rain pounded the windshield.

Once in the city limits of Knoxville, the traffic was thin and moving rather briskly until all of a sudden traffic was stopped, backed up, and slowly moving to the left as emergency vehicles creeped past us with sirens blaring.  Fortunately, most of the drivers (including truckers) were polite, allowing every other vehicle to merge left from 4 lanes down to 1 lane that was actually the pull over zone for disabled vehicles.

As I drove by the wreck, it looked like 4-5 vehicles were involved and that a few had been injured since there were 3 ambulances.  One of the vehicle involved in the crash was facing me as I drove by, the front end of the car completely smashed up against the front seat and the driver was still pinned in behind the wheel. 

I later found out that all the vehicles involved were driving too fast and following too close and with the amount of rain coming down on the road and hydroplaning conditions in place...  it was the perfect storm for an accident.

I would suspect that there are twice as many vehicles on the road in 2020 as there were in the 1960's and I have personally observed that unless there is a highway patrolman or cop in plain sight, NO ONE OBSERVES the speed limit and that includes:  Old/Young, Black/White, Male/Female as well as Hispanics, and illegal immigrants.

Personally, I don't care who lives or dies anymore because when I drive, I assume EVERYONE IS DRIVING UNDER THE INFLUENCE and watch my speed, keep my distance, and am constantly on the lookout for asshole drivers.

It's nothing personal, just the world that we are living in today.

Sunday in the Valley

A storm blew through the valley this morning about 5:00 am waking up both my wife and I because of the rain hitting against the window and the wind...  this is very unusual for me because I sleep through damn near everything, including rain/wind storms worse than this one.  Fortunately, it only lasted about an hour or so but it was forceful enough to move furniture and carpets around on the back deck.

Once up, I just decided to stay up...  so, I fed the cats who were roaming around and let me know that they were STARVED TO DEATH as soon as I opened the door to the bedroom...

If I do not respond to their requests right away, they either start fighting each other to get my attention or they decide they need to do a little mischief to get my attention...

Once fed my 3 monsters settle down and go back to bed and typically will sleep for a couple of hours before they are again out and about, looking for food or trouble or sometimes a soft lap in which to jump into and continue their sleep...

It appears that there will be no sunshine today as an overcast sky seems to be lingering around and whatever work that was going to be done will have to be postponed...  And, while some (who are impatient) might think that would be a pain-in-the-ass to postpone a work activity, let me remind you that we are both retired and can work outside while you must work for your employers...

Retirement does have its advantages...