male rain {en}

Ah well, I'm kind of busy at the moment! Right now we've just finished lunch and are waiting for the coffee to come, my brother-in-law has some well established traditions, one of them is having to tidy everything in the kitchen before taking coffee. The girls are sorting out beads on the floor, my sister is doing her crosswords. Thunder is rolling from time to time, the weather is alternatively sunny and very wet as the thunderstorms are crossing above. In the coop the ducks and the goose seem very happy with the weather. Everybody arrives tonight for the family reunion tomorrow and the house will be very busy and crowded. I helped my brother-in-law to put up a big tent (we call it the Barnum after the famous P.T. Barnum) in the yard. This afternoon someone will bring us the caravan, an old thing built in wood, very pretty, for the kids to sleep tonight. In a way I'm glad to see my family and relatives, everybody who is gathering here, on the other hand I'm not so glad to lose my peace and quiet and my room off the main house with a door giving onto the country, for a bed on the mezzanine above the main room. And as usual I do not want to be back in Paris, Sunday night, but I'm not at all compelled to do so. Rain is pouring right now, a big male rain, the Navajos who live in the steppe of southwest America, a desert actually but not exactly, a steppe rather, distinguish between the male rain, the big and violent downpours and the female rain, the light drizzle of winter or fall perhaps. Male and Female rain as in the poems of Agnes Tso :

He comes
riding on the wind
kicking up dust
behind the trees
blowing flakes of rain
He flees past my window
to a distant rumble

Ah, I love these rains of summer, the light is white and clean after as if washed.