Rain, Thursday

by Raymund L. Fernandez

for Kinutil CDN / 31 August 2014

Its been a long time since he stopped asking who Kathy is. He remembers the song.. Paul Simon starts it this way: 

I hear the drizzle of the rain,

This was no drizzle. It was a downpour catching them in the mid-life of afternoon traffic along Escario Boulevard. It poured large drops, making a mist in the distance. It poured with a roar drowning all other sound. They were on a motor bike, their experience, transformed completely. The mundane suddenly becomes adventure. Many years have passed since he got rained on this way. A short trip from Carcar, his friend Javy, his back rider. Now it was his daughter, Linya, as the song continues: 

Like a memory it falls, 

Soft and warm continuing, 

Tapping on my roof and walls.

In this instance, the rain tapped on his helmet and his eyeglasses. There is a trick for rain getting on your glasses. You never touch them or wipe them with your fingers. This only makes it worse. Leave them alone. The wind blows them away. Speed up. You will have no problem seeing your way through. 

From the shelter of my mind, 

Through the window of my eyes, 

I gaze beyond the rain drenched streets, 

To England where my heart lies. 

He does not understand why part of his heart still lies in UP even after 30 years of teaching there, but it does. The office called. Documents needed to be signed. And though it seemed the rain would come sooner than later, his daughter urged him to go anyway. And so they came. and by the time they got here, they were drenched to their underwear's. They were wet in the most abject sense, dripping their way through the hallways and up into the office.

Paul Simon continues his song with a declaration of his love for Kathy whom we do not know, with whom his thoughts lie as on a warm dry bed on a cold rainy afternoon. And Kathy there, sleeping, dreaming of rain. To ride a bike inside a downpour is to enter into her dream. There is more than a hint of danger. On that trip with Javy, he could feel his tire slip tenuously on the asphalt road polished by years of suburban traffic and greased by a patina of clay left there by truck tires. 

When both wheels make as if to slip on the ground this way, he cannot stop by using his brakes. As soon as his tires lose traction, he knows he will fall suddenly and without warning. He can only downshift. The trick is to drive slow. Which is not such a bummer since the faster he goes, the colder it gets. It can get so cold, he might begin physically to shiver. And yet, he dreams to get there quickly, get to where he is going, get home.

Rain, Thursday, brought on a flood, turning the roads into rushing creeks and rivers. And when the traffic stopped them on the road, they had to put their feet into the water and pray the rain would not kill their engine. 

There is an instrumental interlude at this point in Kathy's Song. The guitar sings the lyrics. But he imagines his daughter improvising her part on the piano. She does not worry about traffic and being safe. She will have fun, loving the rain as rain should be loved. On her face, a big smile. She tastes the rain in her mouth, feels its cold caress, her clothes sticking to her body as if they were not there. The rain flushed into the gutters: 

And as i watch the drops of rain,

Lead their weary paths to die,

I know, that I am like the rain,

There, but for the grace of you, 

Go I.

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