My presence and my ideas are insignificant to the rain. The furious dark grey clouds release a habitual substance from their clutches. It builds and builds until the weighing pressure suffocates the land below. The land, teeming with life, hides. Life stops, if only for a few waning hours. The rain brings life, it enables prosperity. This is why I feel insignificant to the rain.
Its presence brings me exhilaration and awe. The rain encompasses all, undeterred by none. My own thoughts stop. I become focused on the building pressure over heard; I can hear the rain begin to collaborate with its long time companions thunder and lightning. I sit in my wooden room composed of wooden panels, and a single wooden window. The darkness is nearly as powerful as the rain, yet the brilliant flash of light disrupts my thoughts, except now I know the trailing of thunder will ensue.
For the longest time, the rain has been my precipice, the point at which I cannot continue into the abyss below. It forces me to stop, leaving no choice but to comply. My mind, my thoughts, and my emotions are forced to reevaluate everything that I perceive. Back home, the rain was rare. Back home, the rain seldom made its presence known. Back home, the rain brought chaos. But here, the rain is only but a daily unconscious process that goes unnoticed. Its presence brings no second looks, as if the morning sunrise is no different.
I stand like a fool in the rain. The drenching clouds consume the town. Showers pelt against the tin roofs and wooden homes of the community. The green selva beyond is hidden behind the grey masked filter of mist. The wind carries the cloud’s offerings to the distances of the community. But for this I am grateful. The rain is a reminder that the green beauty around will remain the green beast. The rivers grow with size and ferociousness. These are the collections of life. In the selva, the natural beauty is interminable. The flowing cascades of the rio become indistinguishable from the flowing white mist. Its essence is in existence.
Just as the sun rises, the storm retreats. The water lessens its falls and dissipates. No longer of substance, the people of my community peer out into the aftermath. Although we observe the same clouds, we see drifting clouds of different mists. Tamia*, archaic in its existence, is a fundamental aspect of life. The sun begins to open wounds in the clouds, piercing all below. For now the rain is hidden but waiting for its role to reappear in the habitual nuances of Amazonian life.
*Tamia is the Kichwa word for rain
