The Rain

It is still the low season here.  The end of the rainy season.  To the east of me, over the Pacific, the moon is almost full, shining through a moving veil of clouds. It is bright enough.  A gecko is singing in the tree nearby.  To the west there are flashes of lightening with only the barest hints of thunder.  

I like traveling in the rainy season.  I like the suddeness of the change.  It is hot, steaming, and then a  quick breeze comes up, cooler but sultry.  Sometimes it passes, other times there are the first tentative drops, a gentle warning.  Then it is either gone or, with an overwhelming suddeness, the world is awash with rain, a tropical deluge that requires either immediate shelter or celebratory abandonment to the elemental forces.  

It is very quiet here in this town.  Not devoid of noise.  It is, after all, a Panamanian town.  Women are working at pounding something next door, some unknown chore.  They are laughing and talking as they work.  There is music drifiting from somewhere, as there always is.  But the town is quiet.  When the high season begins, when the rains stop, the hotels will fill up and the cafes' will be busy.  There is no one else staying at my hostel.  I have the whole garden to myself.  Just me, the gecko, and a few of the garden cats prowling the shadows in the moonlight.  

The band from the ex-pat bar is starting up now.  They, the ex-pats, are returning from wherever they go during the rains.  I had dinner at this place and watched them trickling in, greeting each other, catching up.

One of the cats has come over for some attention.  The gringo band is starting in on some jazz-rock fusion.  They are not bad.  I am pleasnatly surprised.  

Moving through the rainy season expands the possibilities, which were already endless.  To be in the rain simply means not being in the dry.  So  there are more places to go and less limitations.  Small insight, but valuable to me.

Maritn Fierro, in his poems about The Gaucho, wrote "When in cold weather, be cold..."  And so i read: Be the thing that is, Be wet, Be hot, Be cold.  To turn away is to raise a barrier to what really is.  The uncertainty of the rains.