Texas Rain

Though the clouds had been hanging overhead all morning, it didn’t start to rain until a low rumble of thunder had sounded like a horn heralding an army. And then the sky unfolded. I sit here listening to it flow, then ebb away again quietly. As time passes, it rushes out more heavily so that the glass of the windows drum like thunder, which I haven’t heard since the first low peal about an hour ago. And then just as swiftly it seems to die again, so that I can hear individual drops falling off the leaves and petals of the bougainvillea outside in the front garden.

I suddenly race outside to drag pillows from the chairs in the front garden. In less than a second I, and the pillows, even though they have only been out for a short time, are soaked through.

This is Texas autumn. When you live in a place where October and November may still mean 100 + degree weather, or stifling humidity from hurricanes and sudden, swift flooding, showers like this one accent the gentle, pleasant weather and seem to say, “See? Texas knows how to take care of its citizens too.” After years of extraordinary drought, rain like this opens the mouth of the earth, and makes it sing.

This year, the latter half of October and November have unbelievably pleasant, gentle, cool and filled with sunshine. Storms, some small and gentle, and some loud and frightening, are bringing the world back into green life after several years’ worth of parched brown summers. In the northeast, autumn is a time of death, decay and oncoming cold. This year’s Texas autumn is a time of abundant green, and blessed relief.

I think when I sat down and began to type, I wanted the rain to inspire me to say something spiritually moving or wise. It hasn’t given me any great insights, except that to listen to it is enough. It is enough that this is where I am right now, listening, sitting, thinking, and letting the rain bring back life to my own parched soul.

 

The Journey of the Monarchs

One of the most wonderful times of year in Texas is October, when the monarch migration is in full swing, and swarms begin floating through the city streets: wandering through traffic, dipping into gardens, gently drifting, replacing clouds in an empty Texas sky over houses and neighborhoods. Every year I’m thrilled by it, and this year is no different.

This afternoon, on a rare, gorgeously perfect day, I stood in my balcony doorway and watched scores of monarch butterflies drift over my house northward. I almost felt like telling them, “You’re going the wrong way!” but I know that it isn’t so. I feebly tried to capture them on my camera, but such is the nature of a terribly slow digital camera-phone and the fleeting, ethereal creatures flying by scores in the sky that I was unable to get more than blurry specks in my pictures.

As they drifted over the roof of my house like a crest of a wave, some fluttered down to my mother’s rosebushes and plants in the backyard garden, and others wandered into the tree in a neighbor’s yard, disappearing so quickly into the landscape of my neighborhood that their presence was lost in a twinkling. Only when they rose up again and showed themselves clearly against a blank sky did they remind the world of their wandering status, their itinerant existence. Only when they had to move on did they distinguish themselves from the natural workings of this small  world. Birds kept flapping around as though irritated, hungry but not hungry enough to forget how poisonous these annual visitors are. My parents’ dogs ignored them, sprawled in the grass and only rousing themselves to bark at passing joggers through the fence or defend the background from squirrel squatters. I’m not sure, but I saw several cars proceeding slowly down the street, so as to watch the procession (or to avoid getting butterfly splatters on their windshield).

As I watched, I could not help thinking of the time when I was living in Philadelphia that a twitterpatted and territorial butterfly kept me company while I intruded on his park bench. He had looked similar to a monarch, but he wasn’t. His presence had also seemed like a sign, or an omen, but I knew it wasn’t. Nonetheless, seeing his wings on the white pages of my book gave me the same shivery, gentle feeling that I get when I pray, or meditate, and feel connected to the inherent divinity of the universe. So now, in the presence of scores of these butterflies, I wondered if I would feel the same shiver down my back, the same deep heartache.

The sunlight glanced off of wings, off of the leaves on the tree, sending confusion through the air as leaves morphed into monarchs, and monarchs faded into leaves. It took about thirty minutes for the entire swarm to move through. A few stragglers floated by later. Some time after that, one or two flew over and then none at all.