cf. photographs via Unsplash and video (rain) by Vimeo-Free-Videos via Pixabay
Or is it only the breeze, in its listlessness
Travelling across the wet mead to me here,
You being ever dissolved to wan wistlessness,
Heard no more again far or near?
Thomas Hardy, The Voice (excerpt)
cf. Jonathan Petersson, “346” (2017)
antediluvian (august, 1986)
in my car at the red light
cascades of rain
silencing
and cold
fell
empty the town
for an eternity
I waited
then
tried to begin again
J.S.
cf. “Stencil” (Japan, 19th century)
“It’s stopped raining.”
“Has it?” When he realized what I was talking about, that there were twinkle-bells of sunshine in the room, he smiled like a weather man, like an ecstatic patron of recurrent light, and repeated the news to Daisy. “What do you think of that? It’s stopped raining.”
“I’m glad, Jay.” Her throat, full of aching, grieving beauty, told only of her unexpected joy.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
cf. Edward Fletcher Stevens, “The American hospital of the twentieth century…” (1918) and
treetreeplant, Vancouver rainstorm August 29 2013 – YouTube
Blues
I sat on the edge of the bed
in the dark
spotlight sheet of rain traveling down the street
I remembered another night
when I looked at the rain
a long time ago
at home
–J.S.
A rainy day in Paris, August, 1984
cf. Emma Justine Farnsworth, At Dusk (ca. 1893) and
RyanWilliams1987, Rainy City – YouTube
Bourgeois Tagg – “I Don’t Mind At All”
cf. Mary Shepard Greene Blumenschein, Un Regard Fugitif (detail) (edited and animated) (1900)
James Jowers, Tompkins Sq. Park (1967)
Mixing memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain…
–T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land
John Sapiro 