“When it rains in Los Angeles…” — #eecummings

I love it when it rains in this city of angels.

Sadly, those moments have been far and few for quite some time now. Yet, when it does happen, the effects are inspiring. It is that cleansing of the air, the prospect of making things grow, of giving life a chance to restore itself.

This period of drought is a metaphor for much of what the world feels right now. We are suffocating in this arid landscape, allowing our own frantic lives to take root, but refusing to let positive things bloom. Yet, nature has a way of making its power known in the rain. This liquid state of hope is a sign that what was once desert can be transformed. What was once lost will be found.

Woody Allen featured a stanza of a poem by e.e. cummings in “Hannah and Her Sisters,” which remains one of my favorite films. His script made use of this phrase, “not even the rain, has such small hands.” The yearning of this poem and its use in a voiced over moment punctuating a scene between Michael Caine and Barbara Hershey has stuck with me for years. It is so easy to think you’re closed off in this world, safer, to be frank. Yet the prospect of the new, that downpour of yearning, is a marvel to behold.

Last night’s rain brought cummings back to me, but not to reinforce a romantic ideal. No. That voice of positive I nurtured in Spain renewed itself, if only for a momenet. We do have the power within ourselves to open our own hearts and imaginations to create a better sense of self, to engage in a greater purpose in this world. It really is a miracle when it happens.

Just like the rain in L.A.

“somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot tough because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skillfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain, has such small hands.” — e.e. cummings

From Woody Allen’s “Hannah and Her Sisters”

Friday, November 21. Written and posted from Wayne Avenue Manor.