The rain falls down upon us all the same.... whether you have an umbrella or not is another story

It is going to take a bit of time before I get the hang of this meta-connected system. There's texting, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, blogs, RSS feeds, Google Voice, for chrissakes! Well, I want this blog to have components of all my mandates, maybe inclusive at times, may not be. I will probably have themed chapters. I will try not to be nerdy about it, yet as prolific as professionally and personally possible. Of course, there are other considerations, such as monetizing, making public, linking and commenting with others, becoming this public person. I never really aspired to be a public figure. It is strange how FB brings certain things out of you, however, in this modern age.

On another note, I woke up around four a.m. to a torrent of rain, haranguing the freight truck outside of my window. It was humid all of a sudden, so the combination of noises and rising temperature of my skin roused me in a most unpleasant way. I wandered over to the window to witness the assault upon my senses and was reminded of a more tranquil event I was privy to almost five years ago in South America. I was visiting Guyana for my grandmother's funeral after a ten-year gap. I was sleeping underneath ineffective mosquito nets, well, half-asleep really since I was determined to keep watch for those same midnight ninjas trying to transmit itchiness and tropical ails in one deft swoop.

So I was losing the fight and nodding off when all of a sudden I hear this tap-dance on the zinc roof where I was staying. It always starts out slow, but builds momentum to the point you can't believe it can still be so loud with the increased physical volume of water. It's the inverse of filling a bucket with water: after the initial pour, the water never vibrates so much while being filled, thus less noisy. No, this was an audio-equivalent to summertime cicadas. It was magical, especially since the block didn't have streetlights but for the full moon casting an eerie glow on the sheet of rain hitting at a subequatorial angle. Nothing like it in NYC.

One of the things I now realize, having finished this memory here, is another purpose I have- to capture the experience of a profound rainstorm in as many corners of the earth as life will allow me.