Kerala

It's as wet and heavy as I had hoped. And cool. Truly monsoon. I got so excited tonight when the sky opened up and rain started pounding on the roof, walls, street, rickshaws. Time to celebrate! Tried to stick my hand out of the iron-gate-like structure they erected to contain our second floor- just to touch the rain as it streamed from the sky and off the roof- wet fingers. It feels like so long since I've been a part of really good, warm rain. It's funny the things we absorb from childhood, fall in love with and never even know. Thick rain.

I remember being so thrilled when the city flooded, having to wade in knee-high water when the car's alternator got soaked, or in restaurants where I worked, frantically sweeping water down the drains as it poured in under the doors. And all the fabulous puddle jumping and kicking and pretending to be as graceful as Singing in the Rain. It was never a question of chill- felt just like swimming in a sun-heated pool at night in mid-July. And the accompanying sounds: thunder, I thought I hated but, in the end, opened avenues of emotion in me that nothing else has been able to flow down in the same way. Then nature singing, after. Crickets, cicadas... junebugs, even, with their dreaded sticky legs and high-pitched wings, getting stuck in your hair and batting around your eyes, making you mad with frustration. Always years of excess- junebugs en masse in the evening lights, looking for the sun and being crushed *crunch! crunch!* under foot on the porch when we headed inside for more ice tea. Crickets piled inches deep in doorways, crawling up our shorts and into our instruments at band practice. Cicadas congregating so thickly your ears screamed with their wailing. The excess of life- sun, warmth, rain- and the way it chooses color for memory.

I miss that.

And love how the sheets of monsoon rains and their deafening all-encompassing roof blanket of noise make me thirsty for it again.