The Sky is Definitely Falling

There were somewhere between 60 and 80 people lined up at the taxi stand at the station.  While I waited for a bus that never came–at least not in the 45 minutes I stood there before giving up–I estimated that a taxi came probably about every 10 minutes.  I'm not sure how this math was supposed to work in terms of getting people home before they would have to return the next day, but maybe there was no other choice.  Maybe all the capsule hotels were booked.

waiting for a taxi in the rain

Until now I don't think I had ever imagined I would have a limit to the rain.  I love it.  I don't love getting wet in it, but well-protected or indoors, it could last forever and I would have thought I could live happily.  But the rain that has come with this typhoon has been strong and steady all day, without a breath, one long run-on sentence of white noise, never letting up, clouding the landscape, putting everyone on guard, and I'm ready to come up for a bit air.  I also don't know what shoes I can where tomorrow.

Regardless, it's still really exciting when unusual weather happens.  It feels like Christmas. Everything is sparkling, nothing is the usual schedule or order, people make exceptions to their routine, and we live in the upset of it together.  I felt oddly close to my baffled and tired–but incorrigibly patient–Japanese fellow bus waiters.  We are all in this together.  And it's also exciting because it is a small glimpse of what nature can do.  There has been so much rain.  Even on my morning bus ride as we crossed the bridge I saw a river full to the brim.  What has it become now? Can there be more water in this world to come down upon us?  And incredibly, the answer is YES!  There is a million times more water in the world.  And so it makes one think about the oceans that are always surrounding us.  What if they rose upon the land either by rain or by wave?  They could devour us.  We are at their mercy.

And so these days are very thrilling in a way.  To get closer to the people around us, inconvenienced and wet together.  To get closer to understanding how terrifying and sublime nature really is.  To try something new, when a dry world becomes wet.