Seven Things: Rain

Today it is raining. Heavily, endlessly. This is why I live where I do, this rain. It resonates in my bones and my heart. When I forget, and I often do, rain remains me of who I am. The dimensions of my life are housed under skies that shift from grey to black, but never find their way to blue.

This edition of Seven Things features seven things that are tied to the rain in my mind. These seven things I’ve lived with for a large portion of my life. Some of them are only ghosts now…but ghosts that live deep in the heart. Each item below is nearly impossible for me to write about. Each item below has kept me alive.

Screaming Trees—Sweet Oblivion

This album came out in 1992. Even though I was dead broke, I found a way to get a copy. It immediately became my favorite album. That has never changed. If you want to understand what the Pacific Northwest really feels like—the rain, the forests, the long drives—this album will tell you.

Mark Lanegan—The Winding Sheet

Mark Lanegan was the singer for the Screaming Trees. In 1990 he put out this, his first solo record. When I heard it for the first time, I’d never heard anything that spoke to me so truly. This was no adolescent power fantasy nor chronicle of adolescent confusion. This was the beautiful sound of the rain that never stops. This was the sound of every myth this dark backwater holds. This was the sound of the people I knew. It was the first album I refused to play for other people, because it was too sacred and I knew I could not explain. I still can’t. [His second solo album, Whiskey for the Holy Ghost, is possibly even better and just as important to me. I can’t do justice to it either.]

Raymond Carver

The reaction I had to The Winding Sheet would be repeated the first time I read a Raymond Carver story one year later. The story was “Cathedral” and the class was the first college-level English class my rural high school had ever been able to offer. I was so moved by this story I went to the teacher after the class to tell her how much it spoke to me. The teacher, a strongly religious lady, wrinkled her face in disgust and said: “I hate that story, but I had to teach it. Here, I have a copy of the collection it’s from and I don’t want it. But I think you need it.” She never knew what a gift she gave me in that copy of Cathedral, and when she was murdered a few years later, my heart hurt. Raymond Carver’s work is one of the core foundations of my artistic life, and his stories have been my constant companion. For me, there is still no better short story writer. He is falling out of fashion, his work belonging to a different time—but in an overstimulated world, I will always need his ability to say everything with a stoic few words.

Cigarettes

I quit smoking in 1995, shortly after I got married. Prior to that, I smoked a lot. I miss it. A lot. It was comforting to me, making the world a place I could reflect on or just be still in. It is a terrible habit and I would never claim otherwise. But I still mentally smoke a pack a day, and it’s a ghost I do not wish to leave. Should I ever be given a diagnosis that I have a limited time of life left, the first thing I will do is buy a carton of cigarettes.

Whiskey

I don’t think I need to explain this one. Just leave some for the Holy Ghost.

Moonstone Beach Motel at Moclips, WA

This is where I discovered the ocean, at the end of the world. There are no words for the experience. I seldom get there these days—the last trip some five years ago—but it is no stretch to say I think of it every day. It figures prominently in my writing, though rarely named. And yet: still no words. I have never been up there alone, but I’ve come to recognize it doesn’t hold that power to others I’ve shared experiences there with. If I could just stop the noise long enough, I’d go up there for a week alone. And hope that it rains, and rains, and rains.

Twin Peaks

Speak to me not of the recent revival; good or bad, it will always be a different thing. The original two seasons, the best two seasons of TV ever produced, captured the darkness and beauty of a Pacific Northwest now largely gone. First on VHS, later on DVD, I’ve never been without the complete show and I can still shut down everything and disappear into it, especially when it’s raining outside.