February 25th

       Rain is not the end of the world. I come from a place where grey clouds are an acquired fact. I don’t conspire against the sun as much as I did when I was young and felt misplaced out in the daylight. I’ve learned to give credit to its role. As a kid, a rainy day meant I could stay in without anyone asking why. Adults are not awarded such luxury. I still find that unless your day can be ruined by the silly fact that you are soaked, you should not act allergic to raindrops. Cities, to me, always seemed like a set of living pictures that you access after you blink or get in and out of a building. The weather disposes it towards a set color palette, which the city needs as to construct its identity along with the nuances of light and saturation bumping into faces and facades. Often times, these places reach their ecstasy in a definite period of a day. So there are night towns and day towns, too. At first, you might crave that every place is sun-inclined. I get it. You are visiting, time’s short and you despise umbrellas. But consider that the locals are the ones that have truly spoken to the pavement you are stepping on. Those that had their first love and disappointment on that bridge that dwarfs you. Their first cigarette, when way too young, in that old place at the corner, now with the sign and the phone number. Or the countless strolls, and frequent sprints while in a rush, both accompanied and alone. Perhaps, on a few occasions, they even found the time to ask that same pavement: Why? Why me? And as they did, the day fell on their shoulders and the light cowered and the grey overtook their dire wish for warmth in an exercise of transcendence. Not because their emotions interfered, as they could not then and cannot now. Their home simply answered in the tongue it knows best and the tones that better define it. Please learn to forgive the sun’s absence. The month is February and this is how the rainy city writes.

Morning on the Seine in the Rain (1897-1898). Claude Monet.
Oil on Canvas.