Ah, Rain, How I Love Thee

We’ve been having a lot of rain in New Mexico lately, after 70 days without any measurable rainfall. We’ve all been waiting for it. We love rain here because there’s so little of it. The state has been in drought conditions for years. the longest duration lasted 329 weeks beginning on May 1, 2001 and ending on August 14, 2007. The most intense period of drought occurred the week of January 19, 2021, affecting 54.27% of the state. After what seemed like an unending explosion of fires throughout the state, the rain is so very welcome. Of course, now the problem is monsoon rains that have brought flash floods and landslides. But that’s New Mexico. I love it here, although the fires have been getting worse with such extremely dry conditions, and now the fire areas (burn scars) don’t have the vegetation needed to prevent mudslides in such heavy rains.

But the rain, predicted to last through June 21, is still coming. It’s Sunday now, June 29. The rain has been falling for hours, off and on. I enjoy the light rain pattering on the roof, and I love the heavy pounding of rain during cloudbursts. It’s all good here. When I went for a short walk a while ago, after one of the little rainstorms, I found a large clump of snails on the sidewalk. There were all mostly out of their shells sliding all over each other. I saw a couple strays nearby, but it seemed that about six to eight snails were having an orgy. Imagine that – a snail orgy.

But I also noticed that the rain sounds so different while I paused under the huge Mulberry tree outside my front door. It had a strange resonance. Usually, people say, “The rained drummed on the roof,” but this sound was so unlike that. No drumming. Repetitive, yes. But also extremely pleasant, reminding me of an orchestra of wind instruments. Imagine that: strings played by the rain, for the pleasure of the snails.

Well, I put a movie on tonight while the rain played its tune. I had a copy of The Leisure Seeker on my shelf since last year, and finally popped it in the player tonight. I bought it because it stars Helen Mirren and Donald Sutherland, two consummate actors. And, you say? Yes, I liked it. Comedy and tragedy. So very well done. I say comedy, because, in the short interview with the actors after the movie ended, Sutherland called it a comedy with a tragic ending. But it’s not any kind of laugh-out-loud comedy. The comedy fell out more like British comedy, funny, as in strange, with unpredictable actions and words.

In actuality, Sutherland’s character has advanced Alzheimer’s, and Mirren’s character is gravely ill, but they spontaneously take a road trip in an old, oil-burning, well-used RV. The movie seemed more like a slice-of-life adventure, with it’s real-life ups and downs, just as life had been for this plucky couple. The denouement of their lives plays out throughout the movie until the movie itself reaches its climax.

Throughout, we experience the inexplicable devastation of someone’s mind as Alzheimer’s disease takes its slow toll on memory and quality of life. Yet, these two people have a chance to share their love and laughs, and even painful memories, as the unexpected surprises even them.

Through it all, I could see myself in the characters, as I often do when reading books or watching movies. I feel the deterioration of my body and brain all the time, and it is already far more than just being easily distracted, or having the body run down slowly. My heart is not well, and it was very noticeable in the aftermath of an extremely painful and traumatizing tooth extraction recently. As the pain continued, unabated for days and nights on end, my heart struggled. I felt it leaping and struggling to keep up. There was pain. And, the antibiotic I took caused severe stomach pain with constipation, and it added to the malaise generated by the pain in my entire jaw. My eyes are rapidly deteriorating now, as opposed to the barely perceptible changes over the last 40 years. My right hand and shoulder move randomly, sometimes spasmodically. My driving is becoming erratic. Working on a movie set for 13 hours is thoroughly exhausting, and much more difficult to recover from than it was just a few years ago. Driving home late, through the very dark section of interstate highway between Santa Fe and Albuquerque has become nerve-wracking and scary.

As I was writing this, I realized that today is Sunday, and I had purchased a ticket to Chatter Sunday, and forgotten to go again. I so enjoy the music and the poetry. Nothing kept me from going. I knew I was going as recently as last night, but it slipped my mind again. Well, c’est la vie, as the French say. Fuck it, I say. Except, it is simply late, in the wee hours of Sunday morning. I hadn’t noticed it was even past midnight. I will probably go to Chatter Sunday after all later on today. It’s still Sunday.

I will continue on, abandoned as I am in life. I have my motorcycle to ride, and buddies to ride with. I have my acting classes to memorize things for. I’m creating a storyboard for a class commercial project that I will add to my clips. I will also create both a sad and a funny monologue for the same reason. I will be part of a movie the whole class will create. It’s also for my clips and resume. I keep going. One day I will run down. I will be no more. But not yet.