The strange rhythm of rain

Sometimes I just can’t help but whine. I guess it is human, right?

I should be graduated by now. Things didn’t happen as I expected though. It ruined my plans. I was always upset about that, so I used to curse the damn British professor who was so unfair, not only with me, because of that.

So here I am, taking Introduction to Poetry again. I guess I’ve been learning much more than I expected to.

One of these days I bumped into a poem that really caught me. It’s entitled Chosen Places by Philip Casey, an Irish writer. In fact, I bumped not only into the poem but into the poet as well, who was brought to Brazil by the Chair of Irish Studies at USP to lecture.

I know it seems as sort of cliché, chosen places or meant to be, is there such a thing? Am I meant to be here, not there? Do we really get to choose our choices or perhaps is it just much more comfortable to think that we do so? Should we trust that we are exactly where we should be? I often question myself.

I said that I bumped into the poem and so into the author because I knew about the lecture but I really didn’t feel like attending it. It was a rainy day, it was also my car-restriction day, so I couldn’t drive to Sao Paulo and it was going to cause me so much trouble trying to get there. Even so I did. Not particularly because I was interested in the lecture, I have to confess, it turned out that it did make my day.

Today was another day just like that. I was just so tired, it was so hot, the students are starting up another strike in my university; we’ve had so many that I’m done supporting or participating at all. I took this course in poetry once before, I took some other subjects in poetry is it really necessary to go today? Are we even going to have classes with all that mess going on there?

So I decided on going, (not particularly interested in the class I have to confess again but because I had to), the professor had previously notified that she was going to be delayed, almost everyone thought she wouldn’t come because of the strike, there were like five people in class. She actually did and brought along an Indian poet. We started analyzing one of his poems (not knowing that he was the author yet). The poem, Rain, seemed to be a paradox, showing images of drought and flood, sun and rain. It’s very well written. It felt so negative at first describing all the destruction a flood causes. Unlike what I’ve always thought, the poet said in India, nature is neither idolatrized nor glamorized, it is indeed amazing and gracious, yet it brings destruction. But even in terrifying tsunamis such as the ones we’ve recently seen or flood, there should be hope.

The anthology is entitled ‘Confluence’ and the anthology is based on this idea, the confluence between rain and rivers, it all mingles in one thing, the ocean, as a cycle.

I’ve got to thing about this cycle, the more I try to change, the more it seems that I am in the exact same place, in the same situations I should know better by now, stuck in reverse.

And then the author started talking about Indian culture, about the third eye, which was one of the images in the poem. The third eye worn by the Indians is the one that sees on the inside. The two eyes we’ve got can only capture sight, what is in front of us, so we should be able to see through that sight and look for what's inside, so we could realize that many times we spend time and effort where we should not.

And then again I started to think about how unfair life sometimes could be, and again I was reminded that at the same time when some people are really mean to us, for no reason, and we wonder how could these people be so reckless with the feelings of others, at the same time there are people who sometimes come out of nowhere to help us out, we wonder, where did that come from? Why is this person being so nice? It’s just the cycle. Things just balance out in the end.

I guess we should ask ourselves from time to time if we are growing and evolving, as it is the only thing really meant to be.

That was my wake-up call of the day, rain is so effortless, so should life be at times.