What delight you feel watching the raindrops run down the windowpanes, watching the simple goings-on in the street or the yard, which in the rain submit to some new yet understandable flow, and you keep wiping and wiping the cold window as it fogs up before your eyes…
And out in the rain you easily overcome the discomfort of the chilly, sharp raindrops, and long remember the taste of rain — the taste of the cold, wet skin of your face and lips; with all your senses you take in information about something kindred, something deep, — and yet something that remains itself, that is, distant, alien, remaining a setting for life, for thoughts, nothing more.
Rain is awaited, healing, sublimely insatiable at any time of year. During the rain you are… surrounded, as if under the protection of the suddenly swollen surface of the earth — of its transparent estrangement, under the protection of the smell, of the grey or cheerful noise; during the rain you are under the protection of coolness, under the protection of the ever mysterious and fearsome distance…
And rain is awaited: the dry, thin light of the sun, the grey, dense and dusty earth, the inevitably deep smell of the soil and the smell of the distance that comes only at night, — all of these are the thresholds beyond which lies the time of rain.
Rain is heavenly. Here is a picture-perfect summer rain: sun, sparse white and heavy clouds, sultry air; a menacing dark-blue storm cloud moves in, the gusts of wind grow stronger, thunder is already rumbling in the distance, and after a few large, scattered drops of rain it grows dark — the cloud has gradually and quickly covered the whole sky, and now there is lightning and frequent peals of thunder, and a heavy, drumming rain pours down as if from a bucket…
The storm dies down, it grows lighter, the sun returns, and in the distance, above the green earth cheerful with streams, a dirty-blue cloud can still be seen, where lightning still flashes. But somewhere nearby earth and sky are joined by a rainbow — a symbol of joyful childhood, so hungry for life…
After such a rain, even a loud conversation in the street seems to come from far away; after rain the cares of the day grow small. Rain washes the earth in both the literal and the figurative sense.
… and yet a higher meaning can be read in the grey colors of cool days, when a sparse or drizzling rain is falling, when the earth is already wet, even muddy, when all around are wet grey buildings, wet trees, and all of nature humbly and faithfully waits… But for what?
On such days I always feel restlessness, a searching, always anxiety. Indeed, the very air is then filled with the same expectation, the same restlessness, as if at any moment, in this measured silence, something were about to happen that would explain everything, something great…
And the surface of the lake in the minutes and hours of such a rain is warm and prickly, yet unexpectedly perfectly smooth, cutting off the shores and, as always, lifting your gaze… And what a musical time it is all around! What Vivaldi or Tchaikovsky could hold it still in sound?
Wet earth and greenery, air overflowing with scents and rain, a sky that begins right above your head, and everything around is damp, grey, low, echoing, quiet.
Quiet, so quiet.
From the book “Etudes on Consciousness”