rainy day

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Today is a grueling example of why those who are employed may hate getting up on a Monday morning.

A cold and cutting rain falls in the early light -- a pelting, break-out-the-umbrella rain -- and because of the time change yesterday, everyone is operating an hour earlier than they might have last week. The clocks may say one thing, but eating and sleeping habits say another.

As if trying to put on a chipper face weren't enough, there is THIS!

Yesterday, during a football between the Eagles and the Colts, Colts wide receiver Austin Collie was left immobile after being tackled during a particular play. He did not get up, as many players do, and hobble away. He just lay there, inert. After a minute or so, six or eight medical personnel gathered around and finally took the player off the field on a gurney. A telephoto shot showed his face with his eyes open ... open and his lids blinking. He was alive in a way his initial inertness suggested he might not be.

Everything had been full of cheering delight and wonderful athleticism and then ... there was the potential for death. Suddenly, the whole scenario and mind set were brought into a new perspective. The babbling commentators were quick to increase their babble, as if babbling could change or explain what had happened: It's just part of the game, one of the risks anyone takes when colliding with someone else on purpose ... blah, blah, blah. And still the hit and the inertness remained in the mind, unexplained and unassuaged. It turned out that Collie had suffered a concussion... but before that was known, there was the inertness in the midst of an an athletic festivity.

Last night I dreamed a dream in which there was no more water. Like all dreams, it was convincing and potent. And even in the dream, the babbling went to work -- how to escape from what was inescapable; the certainty that death would result papered over with explanations and a search for exculpations: "I have been good. Why is this happening to me?!" "If I talk and think enough, maybe it won't be so."

The dream was edgeless and powerful ... incorrigibly factual.

And yet this morning, the water pours down as if it would never stop.
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