What to Do When the World Is Sad

It has been raining all night, a steady rain, the kind of rain that makes me worry about flooding if the rain keeps up.  But it's not the kind of torrential rain that makes me worry that the roof will be pounded apart.

In the past week, we've had those kinds of rains too.

I think of the line from early in Gabriel Garcia Marquez's "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings":  "The world had been sad since Tuesday."  I think it's a perfect way to describe the kind of rain we've had--and also, the larger mood of our world lately.

What makes this raininess so strange is that we should be in a dryer season.  But our rainy season, summer, was oddly dry.

Perhaps that's why I had such strange dreams all night.  I dreamed I was in a verdant landscape, ringed by volcanic mountains and a lake, with a lovely cottage in the distant.  I was walking across the lush, green lawn and suddenly, the ground sank below me--I was swallowed up to the shoulders by the ground which was moist and smelled so fresh--and yet I knew it was an extremely perilous situation.  It was like being swallowed by fresh grass clippings--they seems so innocuous, and yet I couldn't get free.

I also had the more mundane danger dreams:  bad guys are after us, but we have a 4 hour head start.

So finally, I got up, checked the window sills for leaks, put a towel in the front window, and plugged in the Christmas trees.  I will beat back the darkness and the sadness.

I don't have a big tree, but several small trees.  It works for our house.  I like that in every direction I look, I see festive lights.

It's oddly warm and rainy for December, but I will be festive!