Within to Match Without

Tuesday slips in quietly, wearing a thick roll of dark clouds around her like a comforter shawl that makes the morning light darker than usual through the bedroom blinds, and I would love to stay a bit later under my own comforter.  But I cannot think of any good reason to do so and can think of several good reasons not to.

A tattering of rain and then the reign
Of pour and pouring-down and down,
Where in the westward gathered the filming gown
Of grey and clouding weakness, and, in the mane
Of the light’s glory and the day’s splendor, gold and vain,
Vivid, more and more vivid, scarlet, lucid and more luminous,
Then came a splatter, a prattle, a blowing rain!
And soon the hour was musical and rumorous:
A softness of a dripping lipped the isolated houses,
A gaunt grey somber softness licked the glass of hours.
   - from, Darkling Summer, Ominous Dusk, Rumorous Rain, by Delmore Schwartz

I have to press the wipers into action on the drive in this morning, setting them to pass ever so slightly infrequently to keep pace with a light rain more mist than drops.  The cars that share my short commute seem divided into two specific camps: impatient, pushing, mad at the rain drivers and those drivers dawdling in indecisive wonder at all this sudden wetness.  Rain?  Summer? Pacific Northwest?

The rain, in the backyard where I watch it fall, comes down at different rates. In the center a fine discontinuous curtain — or network — falls implacably and yet gently in drops that are probably quite light; a strengthless sempiternal precipitation, an intense fraction of the atmosphere at its purest.
   - from, Rain, by Francis Ponge

The music stream shuffle is as determinedly mellow as the rain.  Even Bela Fleck's rapid-fire banjo rendition of a Paganini piece lands languidly on the ear.  Intermittent thunderstorms are predicted for later today; maybe the drive home will feature more raucous music, within to match without.

Today's Full Playlist:

• Heaven/Where True Love Goes, Yusuf Islam
• As Time Goes By, Mark O'Connor, Wynton Marsalis, Jane Monheit
• Dreams Be Dreams, Jack Johnson
• Number One, Joni Mitchell
• Paganini - Moto Perpetuo, Bela Fleck
• All Good Things, The Weepies