The Rain is Just Rain
A riff on rhythm, writing and feeling
Autumn arrives overnight, the days so far gray and drenched. Boots on the pavement enter puddles and exit, splashing in passing, wind gusts tugging under folds of the umbrella, shielding and tense and delicate. Water hits in rhythms on windows, on arms and eyelids, shock of staccato on metal siding. Autumn arrives on the winds of a storm, and brings with it a soundscape, and is relentless — a city woken up, held inside, and lulled to sleep by the rain.
What feels good to you? — it’s the question I linger with, most days, whispered softly like a breath sometimes, or louder like a downpour at others. I remember it when I am still enough to listen. The rain decidedly in this moment Does Not Feel Good. Earlier in the day I’d talked to friends; we are complaining. The rain the rain the rain, we lament. We emphasize it like a chorus. We repeat and repeat again. It ruins plans, we say.
On Saturday I am walking to a show and I start to pull on the thread of complaint because it’s familiar, easy, and seductive in its repeating — the trail of thought that wants to say there is nothing good here about this rain. Cars crash through puddles and who knows what flies up in in those splashes, boxes turn soggy, trash left out overnight, the breakdown of citrus peels and pizza crusts in the street. I start to notice the rain notice that I’m telling myself a repeating story: this rain is intense, this rain is this, this rain.
So I pause while I’m walking and I notice. I notice how repeating the story of resisting the moment shows up in my body: brow furrows, shoulders round, and I curl in. I choose this moment to go inward. I feel this story in my mind like a hand gripping around crumbling a piece of paper.
And then, awareness comes; for a minute I am the witness, the observer. It gives me spaciousness, just enough. I realize I have no say in whether the seasons shift, or the sun comes out — but I do have the moment of now, the one where the glimmer of awareness comes in and neutralizes the experience like a deep breath that tells me this rain is just the rain. The rain is the rain, an experience is an experience, a thought is a thought, and it’s all fine; it’s the storyline or feeling tone that we assign that adds on weight or levity. I feel this glimmer of awareness push through like a plant on the sidewalk, like blue sky hints pushing through the gray day. This awareness is neutral, then bright like sunlight, like a breath, like a clear day.
I feel into the sensate nature of the weather, the contrast. How the rain lets me know the boundaries of my existence, cold drops making contact with warming skin as I reach out to feel the drops of water hanging on the edge of branches. I am walking again and have shifted states; I am relaxing. The rain a companion. The rain is necessary. The rain a thinking place. The rain a minute for rhythm, these days a cocoon.
That night, I walk home, repeating and retracing my steps through the city. I see a show, and have echos of a chorus I’ve been singing for months trailing through my body. It makes its way seemingly through every cell, every thought, music so loud I can feel it everywhere, songs that have held me through drives and daylights and delights and wondering, words I have learned through the act of repeating and repeating. I wonder what it would look like if the rain could sing a song, I think, if the dots of water rained down and made their way on the page if, nature’s patterns, movements, and repetitions were given the credence of language. What would the wind speak? What does the sky say? Nature is creative, generative, adaptive, always; creativity is the channel and flow of experience through our own being and our own existence.
Like the rain, our lives have a rhythm to them, outpouring their own pace of connection, expression, and cadence. Rhythms play with and against each other: some are steady, some erratic, like the weather, or the ways that people orbit in each others’ lives in varying levels and frequencies. But being with ourselves is an ongoing, everyday thing; writing teaches me to be with that rhythm of myself more, and learn to not just tolerate my own existence, but enjoy it, and celebrate it. Like the weather, some of these moments with our inner landscape are torrential, pounding against the windows, loud on the sidewalk, while some days trace themselves easily like sunlight across our skin, like a rain’s gentle mist. Some days are activating, boring, other days delightful and soothing. The rain is just the rain, though, part of the whole ecology, the whole of the experience. The mind is just the mind, experience is experience.
As we write or create, finding a rhythm that works and feels good becomes essential for the ease of flow and returning. The easier we make it for our practice to unfold, the more likely we are to return to it. If we approach writing, making, relating, or any kind of creative expression with resistance, armoring, rigidity, a tight fist, it is much harder to access that creative expression and flow. Ground down into noticing, wondering, and feeling. Take a breath. Pause the story. Ground down. Settle in — or sometimes, pick up the pace.
I think I can write to you about place, pace, and tempo without acknowledging being in a city, especially one that thrums with the threads of quickness. How this repeating becomes a culture, an identity, its own chorus. How relating to something repeatedly becomes ingrained in our brains and how we have the choice to choose what we let in to the rhythms of our lives, what feels like a detriment, a skillful challenge, or a pleasure in the process. When I hear a repeating story I’d prefer not to believe, I try my best to turn towards it, tending to it, whisper to it slowly, or hold it in the body — like, it’s okay, you can let that go, now. Or, like this week, you’re right on time.
I often consider rhythms, sounds, pacing, and things repeating — and whether what gets repeated is aligned with what is actually something I care to think, feel, belief, embody, and say. In my days of making music and printmaking I was immersed in rhythms and repetitions and through those processes learned to find pleasure in the nuance of the process, learning about variations, and expressing through iteration. Anticipating a rhythm became a grounding place, a comfort, a safe haven, because of the familiarity — while iteration was an ingredient for humility, building capacity to repeat something with a willingness to admit when something needs to shift. Crafting creative rhythms of soothing, grounding, strengthening, supporting, activating, and safety have kept me in the flow of life; they teach me again and again to value the process as the gift and reward, and not just the end result.
As humans, we may look for patterns in order to feel safe, we may look for repetitions for a feeling of safety, and that sense of safety to express is often a precursor to express ourselves creatively. Uncertainty can be an altar to the process of life, a place ripe and surprising, and often the unknown is the most intimate — so when we learn to be with ourselves, be with the process, we’re building a source of strength in life. Slowing the pace is what I know I turn to in moments that spark uncertainty. Writing can be slow, and so it helps to settle the cadence of thinking, can help us unpack the spirals, channel the thoughts out from the sometimes flood of the mind through our bodies into the basin of the page — as can breathing, resting, and meditation, or whatever your ingredient is. Sometimes the mind’s a downpour, sometimes a drip. Like the rain, we can turn to the mind and say, it’s all okay here.
Pay attention to what feels good to you: do you like to write every morning, in the deep night, in the middle of the day, or only seasonally, or occasionally? Is that what works for you? Does your timing and pacing chance as life speeds up or your thoughts slow down? Do you shift with the seasons? How often do you like to write? Can you find a way to stay with it?
Grounding into rhythm, this week, play around. Shake things up if you want to. Stay still in one place. Let a single moment be a drop of water on the surface of the lake of your life. Try writing in the morning, or switching it to the night. Maybe a mealtime is a chorus, a place to ground down, a time that’s ripe with reflecting. Maybe the autumn arrived and with it more threads for your writing to pull on. Maybe you’re savoring summer still. Maybe you’re mourning, or maybe you’re ready to emerge, or go in. Tune into your own ecology. Notice the rhythms that already exist within you in your life and add your creative time in where it makes sense, where you’re already tuned into the creative tone, or when it feels best.
Play with tempo — write fast, or if your mind’s alive, or try writing slowly. Slow it down. Ask yourself how slow you can go. Feel it all. Put on your favorite songs and see if the sound assists with the thoughts’ immersion and expression. Notice if the shift state gives you energy, challenges you, brings some kind of delight. Notice when the resistance is an outcry of pain, or the discovery of discomfort is just from trying something new. Try this new pattern for a week or a month. Tune into the sound of the mind. Is it a loud song, a quiet place, something in between? Do you like the songs you’re singing? If not, sing the song of something different. Notice what you notice. The rain is just the rain. Let’s be with it.
Excited to announce two new experiences, running live, and then available online, next month: Pleasure Portal and Embodying the Artist arrive next month, alongside two other new in person experiences, listed below. If you want to know more about these experiences first, and when these classes land, sign up below for the waitlists.
next month:
October 5 | Bookbinding: Pamphlet Stitch
October 7 | Bookbinding: French Link Stitch
October 15 | Taste & Write: Meditating on the Senses
October 26 | Build Your Journaling Practice
check out the experience calendar + shop the recording library for guided journaling sessions or email me to schedule your own.
nourished by:
four teeth on repeat | a favorite playlist from summer | writing in a map journal in thyme green and a spiral notebook daily | cooking tahini eggplant, based on this and tahini blondies, earthy and grounding for this season | biking, walking, and running
