Drip drip drip... (a lackadaisical rambling)

"Oh, Hi", as they say one says. I suppose I ought to write something.

As I begin to write in earnest, it is indeed starting to rain. The day has been brooding on this evening moment from early hours; but only now are lightnings and dropplets together falling. The heavens roar and pour forth to wash my dusty city: Vidi aquam egredientem...

*   *   *

The storm passes over with varying intensity, like lumpy oatmeal, or a battle waxing and waning as new troops weary and new forces drawn up. Sometimes the thunder recalls a lion purring --- not immediately violent, not quite safe. Sometimes the air in the house veritably tingles with a hunter's anticipation!

Here comes a thick bit, right now! Oh, what a noise! A hundred, a thousand snare drums without a Drum Major to coordinate them. They march off gradually, leaving a pancake-sizzle sound behind.

*   *   *

After prayer, what is one supposed to do, if one doesn't know what to do? Obviously, beyond thinking, too --- it's the thinking that seems to get me into trouble, you see. I think and think and usually come up with no decision. Most unhobbitlike am I, in that way. Do you remember, perhaps, when Bilbo said it?

"Go back? No good. Go sideways? Impossible. Go on? Only thing to do!

Somehow (perhaps I forget the eliminateds and return to them?), I neither reach a "yes, that sounds good" nor an "only thing to do!". Wandering about, getting dizzy... and forgetting why.

*   *   *

But that's OK. Gradually, we are walling-up the side-routes to traps and blinds; gradually, we learn to keep direction (that is, "of straightness") in the darkness we once took for seeing. True sight, in the true light, takes some getting-used-to.

Another period of dripping, of quiet, though it's all one rain. The same flood that purged the Earth also floated Noah along; the difference was a matter of disposition, of being inside or outside the Ark, the Barque... being inside, and it not being a flood, this quiet rainy bit is making me sleepy, so I'll turn off the drippy tap, now, and I'm sure you all won't mind. Maybe a good evening for a warm bath...

Good night.
God willing, some of us will see eachother in the morning.