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I knot the two white curtains into bundles, and they hang like cotton pendulums over the windows. I can see outside now.
The light is white and piercing, backed by a gray mantle of mist caping the sky. It's a medieval cape of gray which mantles the mist, bucking the wind strongly and held together at the neck with an ornamental pin in the shape of a shield. The pin is very heavy, pewter with swords crossing on the front. Rain has fallen steadily for ten days.
I look out at the light some more and sink down into the house. If I'm not careful, I will sink into the green dripping sodden gray matted wet moldy view. I am afraid it will take me and I won't get back. Rain has fallen steadily for twenty days.
I go into the kitchen and there are no curtains over the big window with French doors. The light is white and piercing, again with gray on the sides and top and when with the rain stop?
I look outside the French doors and sink into the green dripping sodden gray branches matted grass mold on the windows.
It is like this at all of the windows in the house, all nine of them. Through all, the piercing white light frames the wet green dripping sodden muddy moldy outdoors. Rain has fallen steadily for thirty days.
I try to look at it--the view from my windows--in a certain way. The view is part of a cycle which is part of another cycle. The little cycle is "now," when it rains. The second larger cycle is the "real" cycle, the one that is swirling madly and diligently towards the future.
The future is dry and dusty and rain comes in thunderstorms to douse the fire of the desert. Green is sage and wet is well water. Mold grows in a Petri dish far away and anything matted is made of pine needles. In the desert, the light shining through windows is blue and piercing, caped with mountains. The mountaintops are mantled in snow and brace the wind strongly, clasped at their necks are trees, and the shadows of the trees are crossed swords.
It's spring here, the rainy season. Last fall it was a rainy season. During summer, there will be yet another rainy season. I'm fairly certain the winter was rainy also, but I lost track of my days then.
Too much rain. Wet sodden green gray dripping always dripping down window panes and off of mossy eaves settling moisture molding wood mildewing walls the rainy season never stops cycling.
I went to the desert a week ago and it did not rain there. It was cold and it snowed, but the light was blue and piercing, and the sun shown blue-yellow through the snowflakes. I clung to the mountain air (yes, very brisk) as I left and when I crossed the last mountain driving back, the sneaky light was white and piercing. In the rearview mirror I saw Three-Fingered Jack and he had snow on all of his fingers. The light behind him was blue and piercing. I cried inside.
When I lived in the high desert as a little girl, I played "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head" on the piano. I imagined another happy girl jumping puddles in yellow boots and red raincoat, on a gray street in a big town. Where I lived, rain meant relief, pleasure, dancing in its delicate drops while they plumed the dust. I would play the song and look out the big window where the Three Sisters Mountains caped the blue sky.
Almost every day I think about going back. The urge to run away home is getting stronger. How much longer until I leave? Some days I do leave; I knot the curtains into their bundles, the light is white and piercing, the wetness everywhere. Before it sinks me into the house, I turn and run and run until I reach the desert again, where the hot sun is tanning the sagebrush and juniper, the thunderclouds pelt rain on the crops, and the tree shadows cross like swords at the foot of the mountains caping the sky.
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