During the rainy season,
for weeks, the sky couldn't be seen. It was veiled by a uniform haze which not
even the moonlight could pierce through.
-Carmen
The
huge, dark, winter clouds arrange and re-arrange themselves in a sinister way,
as if each one were trying to find a place previously assigned to it in a
colossal battlefield that instead of spreading under my feet hangs ominously
over my head.
Once this exercise is finished, the sky
looks as if one big cloud covered the entire planet. A dense, threatening
cloud, floating overhead, impervious to the light that shines gloriously above
it; a light that tries with fury and without success, to find a crack and beam
through to me, to make me smile and to set my heart on fire.
I
feel as though the gigantic and compact cloud descended slowly towards me,
trying to choke me, and engulf me into a vast gloom, sad and endless. Then it
looks like heaven's gates are about to burst open, and that I will be drowned
in another universal flood.
But it doesn't rain. The sole purpose of
this pointless game is to block the sunlight. The clouds threaten but never
strike, as if they were grown-up men playing to be cruel children.
I like the sunshine. I also like the rain;
I find it romantic and charming; it softens my temper and relaxes my nerves; it
quenches the inner fire burning with unsatisfied desires, suicidal ambitions,
and broken dreams. The sound of the rain, furiously pelting the window, or
softly flowing against it, brings to my mind images of peaceful and quiet
places. A little, sleepy shack in the middle of the valley, or perched up on
the mountain where I would devote all my time to reading and writing, being
caressed by the heat of the fireplace, the sound of the rain, the birds
singing, the wind playing in the treetops, the water flowing through the
pebbles in the creek, and the woman that I love.
What I really hate, what drives me crazy,
are the uselessly overcast winter days. Sometimes they torment me for weeks in
a row. Weeks of purposeless dark clouds! Clouds for the sake of being cloudy!
As if the sky was reluctant to release its anger in the form of tears.
All this concentration and display of
energy for no apparent reason, is a waste, proving that even nature can afford
to be redundant, frivolous and squandering.
Standing by the window, with my elbows
resting on the ledge, and my fists against my cheeks, I look up once more, to
that heavy canopy that seems to reach beyond the edge of the world, and that
probably will be there longer than I can stand, and then, my spirit, my soul,
my mind, my whole being, begin to collapse under the sheer weight of the
oppressive sky.
©
Text and photograph, William Almonte Jiménez, 1998, 2011
