Chapter 141: Day 140

Day 140,

Morning thought: the sound of thunder woke me today.  I’ve grown used to regular distant rumbling like murmuring from across the room but this was more akin to shouting in my face; far less common, startling, and rude.  Still I wonder what it said.

Heh… what the thunder said.  A reference to a reference.  The title of one story thread in a complex web of stories of a sort that I could never properly retell in the oral format used in this place that borrowed imagery and title from a passage of a poem I only read once and didn’t understand by an author of whom I only recall that I was introduced to their work at a time in my life where I couldn’t properly appreciate it.

What is the point of making a reference that no one will get?  Particularly one made knowing the audience won’t get it.  Is it still homage or allusion if everyone assumes it is one’s original statement?  At what point does it become plagiarism?  Is the point to sound clever by reiterating the thoughts of those who came before?  Or is it just to hold on to a thing you loved and comfort yourself with its closeness as it bleeds into your speech?  How many of my own verbal quirks and stock phrases are borrowed from things I’ve heard and read?  Minor lines that should have been forgettable in the grand scheme of things but struck a chord and became etched into my patterns of thought and speech, eventually drifting so far removed from their source that everyone just figures that’s how I talk and even I forget that it was once a quote.

Or perhaps all references are made with the hope that someone will get them, even when all evidence paints the audience as unfamiliar with the source material.  All for the chance of stumbling across that one person who will understand and in that moment of recognition the two of you will be in on the joke together; a connection made across the void burning all the brighter for the surrounding darkness.  Even if no further words are spoken and paths never cross again, in that moment of recognized obscurity the two of you have shared a secret unknown to even your closest companions.

I’m waxing fauxlisophical again.  This entry’s gone on long and Maiko is growing restless waiting for me.

Still, I find myself stormy eyed this day.

 

I find myself pleasantly exhausted.  I think I shall sleep well tonight.

The storm’s gone from one night into the other without cease.  Lessening in intensity to a light shower from time to time, but at no point since yesterday has there not been some form of rain.

We stuck with Maiko’s lessons for a time.  She’s making swift progress.  Then again, it’s not like she was totally illiterate to start with, just unpracticed and uninformed of some of the root building blocks with which she might be able to more easily piece together the parts she was unfamiliar with.  Also, it seems she’s been diligent with practice even when I’m not around.  Perhaps I should begin assigning my regular students homework.

Still, diligent learner or no, it seems the two of us together have only so much patience for such activities in one day.  I couldn’t quite bring myself to take the laundry all the way out to the stream that was surely overrunning its banks and running more swiftly than usual by now, so I went back to the washboard and basin I’d been making (probably incorrect) use of before I’d switched to fully river washing when the cistern ran low toward the end of the dry season.  There’s certainly little concern of that happening now.

That only took so long though and as I laid garments out to dry as best I could indoors, I found myself with hours left to spend and too abnormally restless to get comfortable with any one activity.

It was then that I walked to the door with only an “I’m stepping outside” to a confused Maiko and proceeded to do just that.

A moment of closing my eyes and stretching to the endless trill of raindrops on the awning.  A breath taking in a scent that I want to call petrichor but recognize as being too far into the rain for that.  A descent down the steps into the precipitatous curtain.  

Soaked to the bone immediately.  

Slowly across the yard as I feel the mud and grass beneath my bare feet in water up to my ankles.  Slowly, for I feel embarrassed.  A smile tugging at the corner of my mouth as I realize I’m beyond that.  Slowly still, for I’ve raised my face to the sky and have no wish to trip.

Arms raised to the sides, palms up like my face.  Standing still, eyes closed, taking in the wind and rain.

Smiling in a storm.

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Something said by the thunder.

A reflexive jump and cringe.  Eyes open.  Laughter, half-forced, half-genuine.  Growing more toward the latter by the second.

A moment to pull aside the hair plastered to my face.  Arms back out.  Smile finished creeping into a grin.  Turning in place.  Slowly at first, footing unsure, water giving resistance.  Picking up speed.  Can I go fast enough for centripetal force to lift my hair parallel to the ground?  Probably too heavy from water to work.  Try anyway.

Dizziness setting in.  Make use of the imbalance as the top wobbles.  Transition the momentum-carried steps into something else.  Stumble dance.  Movement never fully stopping.  Only slowing until vestibular equilibrium is regained.  Arms no longer at rigid perpendiculars.  Now flung out with each step.  Each bend of the spine and waist.  Accentuate the movements.  The movements more measured.  Increasing tempo.

An attempt to match to a rhythm.  Many rhythms.  Of  the wind and rain.  Of memory.  Of tunes cycling through the mind of a body that lacks the skill to ever do them justice in attempting to repeat them aloud.  Leave them silent save in memory.  Let the observer guess at what they might be.

An observer?

A stutter of the body in motion.  A smile sent that way.  A wave incorporated into a scooping of the standing water that returns it to the air.  

Eyes closed.  A forgetting for a time.  A return to the dance.  Mere wild flailing to the observer.  Dance to the dancer.  Observed?  Remember, forget.

Gyre and gambol.  A grin flashing with the lightning.  A knowing that the thunder will incite a jump.  An unconscious decision to use the reflex instead of fighting it.  Laughter at what the thunder said.  A dare to the storm to take the dancer.  To strike down.  Not a boast but a tease.  A playful utterance to a partner.  Irony in how unthinkable it would be.

Sight gone dark.  Exhaustion, but not that much.  A sunset hidden by grey clouds gone black.  Was the dance that long or did it start late?

A breathless ascent up the steps.  A short distance made mountainous.  Out of the rain but not nearly dry.  A collapse into a seated position leaning against the house.  An invitation to the observer to join next time.  A bemused pronouncement of strangeness.  Agreement.  A request for a towel.  A head shaken in disbelief, exasperation, as the observer goes to retrieve one.

Maiko brought me a towel.  

Dry.  Mostly anyway.

I still wound up taking shower afterward.  It might have felt a bit redundant, but there was plenty of mud and bits of grass in addition to the rain.  Also, it helped dispel the chill that had set in once I finally stopped.

Dinner was simple.  I had worked up an appetite to eat just about anything and was too worn out to properly cook anything.  Even this entry was written in the residual haze of that fevered trance.  I wonder how much of it will even be intelligible to me come morning.

As I said, pleasantly exhausted.  I expect to sleep well tonight.

I wonder if I will dream.

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