Lamma Island, 9:31 AM – Rain.

Entry 90

I step out just in time to admire the way the green of the treetops contrasts with the cement of the sky. The clouds are on the other side of the valley, so I should make it down the hill in time for breakfast.

Just as I make it to the valley floor, the wind picks up. Then a sound comes from the other side of the valley floor. A tractor speeding downhill. A very loud tractor for a very wide valley floor.

It strikes me that I have never heard the approach of rain before. Rain has always happened uniformly, simultaneously. Rain does not wipe itself across empty air, erasing silence. Not until today, at least.

I went through a phase which colored my interpretation of dramatic weather. I still don’t understand why I went through this phase, but if you get me tipsy enough, I might show you all the good videos on the internet.

All the ways those Oklahomans interviewed by news crews describe the roar of a tornado - a freight train, a jet engine. A sound you hear before you hear it. Ears still turning it over, unable to understand why it’s getting louder. How could it possibly? An enveloping, wake-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night-and-it’s-already-too-late sound. A sound that takes your neighbors house but misses yours. A sound that keeps people regulars at church.

Perhaps it’s the thing for anyone anxious, the ultimate unpredictability, the evenest of playing fields, no one can really prepare for it, and so anyone can be caught off guard, and in seconds everything can change forever.

But today is of course just rain.

Torrential rain. In no time the path is flooded. I am barefoot. Up ahead a grandmother’s umbrella has gone. Away it goes. Mud seeps up from between thrashing reeds of the swamp on my left. By the road, builders struggle to tie down a tarpaulin which was once a sunshade. Flapping. Shouting. Somewhere a door is slamming. Further along, the black man who doesn’t look at me is trying to tuck a yellow rain poncho over his wheelchair-bound charge. Well, he certainly won’t look at me now.

Thunder comes last.