In Continuum.

Suddenly, A Storm





Row, row, row your boat,
Gently down the stream.
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
Life is but a dream...

A scene in the movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind that I particularly loved, was when Joel planned to hide Clementine from the Lacuna Inc. crew in a memory where she never existed, so that she will not be erased from his memory. So there they were on his couch figuring out how to go about doing it, when Joel recalled a random memory of himself as a kid hiding under a metal tin roof, and the thundering skies above raining down upon everything else. Row, Row, Row Your Boat started playing in the background as little Joel stretched out his hand into the falling rain from the tin roof above, and catching the droplets with his tongue.

Then it started to rain in the living room, Clementine puts a book on her head as a sort of shelter. It worked! She yelled, as Joel crawled underneath his kitchen table and took shelter. The old bicycle that he used to ride appeared, the water gathering in small pools upon the triangular seat, and all around the house the furnitures slowly got soaked with this sudden downpour. That is one of my favorite scene in the movie, one of the most interesting and original one I have ever seen too.

This morning, my mere three hours of sleep was rudely interrupted with the sound of doors slamming shut all around the house. The air-conditioning was turned on, so I must not have noticed the storm outside my bedroom window. I woke up startled, staring around the darkened room and checked the clock. 7.09 AM, what a lovely time of the day to start raining, especially when you haven't got anything else to do for the next couple of hours. So I turned off the air conditioning and through the gap between the window and the sill, I smelled the salty taste of rain faintly. Too faint, but enough to put a smile on my face as I hummed the nursery rhyme under my breath.

I remember as a child, my uncle used to tell me stories about his voyages on cruisers and destroyers that fascinated me. I admired my uncle, and I still do for his dry humor and intelligence. In fact, he might be the smartest I know. But there is a fine line between a genius and the insane, and sometimes my uncle can be a bit of the latter.

He told me of his adventurous venture into the heart of a hurricane once, driving down to the beach and facing the wrath of nature alone in his raincoat. As he weaved the story with his words, I conjured a fantastical image of this man in a yellow raincoat, braving the storm with his chest held up high, and cursing the heavens at the same time. Of course, my uncle did none of those ridiculous and almost blasphemous things. But stand in the storm in a raincoat he did, and he was so very proud of it while my aunt dismissed his actions as a mere form of stupidity rather than bravery.

So whenever it rains, there is always an overwhelming urge to dash out of the house in a raincoat, just to see how it is like to be beaten dumb by the pouring rain. I have never walked in the rain in a raincoat before, always under the shelter of an umbrella. As foolish as my uncle was, at least he dared to experience and he did it. And as for me, I dream about doing such foolish things in the comfort of my bed in the early hours of the morning, finding not the courage and the raincoat to run out into the blistering cold.

Nonetheless, I still admire the beauty of the rain. There is something therapeutic, just listening to the sound of the rain against the window, like a dozen fingers tapping against the surface, or the way everything turns into a blurry white and gray in the distance, a giant wet veil over the rest of the world. It is as if somebody created this giant bubble of sorts to separate my home to everything else, and this is where we shall live for the rest of our lives - or at least as long as the rain lasts. My mother and I talked about it in the morning about how long the rain would last. She was hopeful that it would stop by ten in the morning, while I secretly hoped for it to last for a week, or even two weeks. Never mind the flooding and the mud flows. Just let it rain down upon the world.

As I type this entry, the world has returned to it's original state - the boring state. Nothing is special about the view outside my window anymore, not even the sound coming through it. Just the sound of the cars below and the occasional horns of impatience. The tapping fingers were gone, and the singing wind vanished with the clouds. I wonder when the next wave of storm is going to come, the next morning I am going to wake up feeling mesmerized.

I might not run out into the rain to brave mother nature in my raincoat, but at least in the safety of my room, I can admire the same kind of beauty too. But someday, you'll see. Someday, I shall run into the rain with my clothes on like a mad man, then tap dance in the rain like there is no tomorrow. Just you wait world, just you wait.