First Rainfall Quotes

Today is the first of August. It is hot, steamy and wet. It is raining. I am tempted to write a poem. But I remember what it said on one rejection slip: 'After a heavy rainfall, poems titled 'Rain' pour in from across the nation.

You're my moon, my stars, you're my sunrises and sunsets. You're the crisp mountain air, the first layer of snow, and that steady rainfall after a humid day. You're just everything.

sometimes deeper mental clarity is preceded by great internal storms healing yourself can be messy seeing yourself through honesty can be jarring and tough; it can even temporarily cause imbalance in your life it is hard work to open yourself up to release your burdens like removing thorns from your body, it may hurt at first, but it is ultimately for your highest good the dark clouds of rainfall are necessary for new growth.

Today is the first of August. It is hot, steamy and wet. It is raining. I am tempted to write a poem. But I remember what it said on one rejection slip: After a heavy rainfall, poems titled RAIN pour in from across the nation.

Listen carefully. Listen and you'll hear everything you need to know. a nightmare is a different case entirely, it's a box of black shadows and vicious red stars, something to keep carefully closed, lest the ground below be broken in two now it's a time like any other, long minutes, tedious seconds, nothing more than flat time moving forward, like it or not it is impossible to stop some things, rainfall, for instance, and love at first sight, and the slow and steady path of sorrow the cruel and desperate variety that always accompanies yearning for someone you're bound to lose when you lose somebody you think you've lost the whole world as well, but that's not the way things turn out in the end. eventually, you pick yourself up and look out the window, and once you do you see everything that was there before the world ended is out there still. there are the same apple trees and the same songbirds, and over our heads, the very same sky that shine like heaven, so far above us qw can never hope to reach such heights sometimes those who love you best are the ones who leave you behind hearts were made for being broken. there's really no way around it if you want to be a human being. ...consider what people are capable of going through in this world and how much courage it's possible to have when someone kisses you with everything they feel, you don't stop thinking about it for a very long time. you didn't think you were going to get married and live happily ever after did you? you're not that stupid... a book of hope that has never been finished, a list of dreams left undone.

The only grown-up other than Jacob who ever came into his schoolroom was Eli Willard. School was in session one day when the Connecticut itinerant reappeared after long absence, bringing Jacob's glass and other merchandise. Jacob seized him and presented him to the class. 'Boys and girls, this specimen here is a Peddler. You don't see them very often. They migrate, like the geese flying over. This one comes maybe once a year, like Christmas. But he ain't dependable, like Christmas. He's dependable like rainfall. A Peddler is a feller who has got things you ain't got, and he'll give 'em to ye, and then after you're glad you got 'em he'll tell ye how much cash money you owe him fer 'em. If you ain't got cash money, he'll give credit, and collect the next time he comes 'round, and meantime you work hard to git the money someway so's ye kin pay him off. Look at his eyes. Notice how they are kinder shiftly-like. Now, class, the first question is: why is this feller's eyes shiftly-like?

It's quite funny how for the first few years, bamboo grows so slowly you might think it's died. While all the other plants sprout and grow and flower, and even bear fruit, the bamboo remains almost completely underground, humble and unremarkable." Indeed, the bamboo looked more like a piece of rotten wood than a live plant. "But all those years it spends in the ground aren't wasted, Serin. While the other plants grow upward, the bamboo spreads its roots deep and wide in the soil, until one day, the roots have all grown. Then the bamboo shoots upward faster than anyone could have imagined.

Hesitantly, Psyche reached out her arms. Instead of a scary shape of a monster, she felt a set of feminine shoulders as refined as her own. She moved her hands over the tender smooth skin, which was warm with life. Just the touch alone gave her a tingling sensation she had never felt before, a stroke of strange pleasure. Cupid leaned over and buried her face on the maiden's breasts then inhaled her sweet-scented skin, inhaling like it was the first rainfall after millennia of droughts, like the last bloom of the last lilac tree on earth. Psyche's eyes fluttered closed, and a soft sigh left her mouth. Without realizing it, she had her delicate arms around the invisible goddess and felt the gentle feathers of her folded wings.

After every rainfall there's a rainbow because rainbows are a promise. A promise that there will always be a light in the darkness. That's why they are too beautiful to overlook.' His hand crept along my cheek, brushing away the fallen strands of my hair. The same strange look came over him, as if he wasn't present at all, but somewhere else, in a strange memory. "You, Norah, are our light." I swallowed hard. "Where's the darkness?" His eyes were trained, like he was under a spell, unable to move away or stop looking at me. "Where you aren't.

The scope was vast: Liquidators’ decontamination shifts ranged from a few minutes up to 10 hours a day, depending on exposure levels. First, they built one large and several small dams along river banks near the plant, to prevent rainfall from gathering up the radioactive dust and debris and washing it into the country’s most vital source of water.216 This gave them time to collect, remove and bury the same material that had been blown across the surrounding area. This included burying the Red Forest, which could not be burned because it would spread contaminated particles. Efforts to decontaminate the forest had failed because wind and rain would continually re-distribute radioactivity.217

Separated from everyone, in the fifteenth dungeon, was a small man with fiery brown eyes and wet towels wrapped around his head. For several days his legs had been black, and his gums were bleeding. Fifty-nine years old and exhausted beyond measure, he paced silently up and down, always the same five steps, back and forth. One, two, three, four, five, and turn . . . an interminable shuffle between the wall and door of his cell. He had no work, no books, nothing to write on. And so he walked. One, two, three, four, five, and turn . . . His dungeon was next door to La Fortaleza, the governor’s mansion in Old San Juan, less than two hundred feet away. The governor had been his friend and had even voted for him for the Puerto Rican legislature in 1932. This didn’t help much now. The governor had ordered his arrest. One, two, three, four, five, and turn . . . Life had turned him into a pendulum; it had all been mathematically worked out. This shuttle back and forth in his cell comprised his entire universe. He had no other choice. His transformation into a living corpse suited his captors perfectly. One, two, three, four, five, and turn . . . Fourteen hours of walking: to master this art of endless movement, he’d learned to keep his head down, hands behind his back, stepping neither too fast nor too slow, every stride the same length. He’d also learned to chew tobacco and smear the nicotined saliva on his face and neck to keep the mosquitoes away. One, two, three, four, five, and turn . . . The heat was so stifling, he needed to take off his clothes, but he couldn’t. He wrapped even more towels around his head and looked up as the guard’s shadow hit the wall. He felt like an animal in a pit, watched by the hunter who had just ensnared him. One, two, three, four, five, and turn . . . Far away, he could hear the ocean breaking on the rocks of San Juan’s harbor and the screams of demented inmates as they cried and howled in the quarantine gallery. A tropical rain splashed the iron roof nearly every day. The dungeons dripped with a stifling humidity that saturated everything, and mosquitoes invaded during every rainfall. Green mold crept along the cracks of his cell, and scarab beetles marched single file, along the mold lines, and into his bathroom bucket. The murderer started screaming. The lunatic in dungeon seven had flung his own feces over the ceiling rail. It landed in dungeon five and frightened the Puerto Rico Upland gecko. The murderer, of course, was threatening to kill the lunatic. One, two, three, four, five, and turn . . . The man started walking again. It was his only world. The grass had grown thick over the grave of his youth. He was no longer a human being, no longer a man. Prison had entered him, and he had become the prison. He fought this feeling every day. One, two, three, four, five, and turn . . . He was a lawyer, journalist, chemical engineer, and president of the Nationalist Party. He was the first Puerto Rican to graduate from Harvard College and Harvard Law School and spoke six languages. He had served as a first lieutenant in World War I and led a company of two hundred men. He had served as president of the Cosmopolitan Club at Harvard and helped Éamon de Valera draft the constitution of the Free State of Ireland.5 One, two, three, four, five, and turn . . . He would spend twenty-five years in prison—many of them in this dungeon, in the belly of La Princesa. He walked back and forth for decades, with wet towels wrapped around his head. The guards all laughed, declared him insane, and called him El Rey de las Toallas. The King of the Towels. His name was Pedro Albizu Campos.

Land and Sea The brilliant colors are the first thing that strike a visitor to the Greek Isles. From the stunning azure waters and blindingly white houses to the deep green-black of cypresses and the sky-blue domes of a thousand churches, saturated hues dominate the landscape. A strong, constant sun brings out all of nature’s colors with great intensity. Basking in sunshine, the Greek Isles enjoy a year-round temperate climate. Lemons grow to the size of grapefruits and grapes hang in heavy clusters from the vines of arbors that shade tables outside the tavernas. The silver leaves of olive trees shiver in the least sea breezes. The Greek Isles boast some of the most spectacular and diverse geography on Earth. From natural hot springs to arcs of soft-sand beaches and secret valleys, the scenery is characterized by dramatic beauty. Volcanic formations send craggy cliffsides plummeting to the sea, cause lone rock formations to emerge from blue waters, and carve beaches of black pebbles. In the Valley of the Butterflies on Rhodes, thousands of radiant winged creatures blanket the sky in summer. Crete’s Samaria Gorge is the longest in Europe, a magnificent natural wonder rife with local flora and fauna. Corfu bursts with lush greenery and wildflowers, nurtured by heavy rainfall and a sultry sun. The mountain ranges, gorges, and riverbeds on Andros recall the mainland more than the islands. Both golden beaches and rocky countrysides make Mykonos distinctive. Around Mount Olympus, in central Cyprus, timeless villages emerge from the morning mist of craggy peaks and scrub vegetation. On Evia and Ikaria, natural hot springs draw those seeking the therapeutic power of healing waters. Caves abound in the Greek Isles; there are some three thousand on Crete alone. The Minoans gathered to worship their gods in the shallow caves that pepper the remotest hilltops and mountain ranges. A cave near the town of Amnissos, a shrine to Eileithyia, goddess of childbirth, once revealed a treasure trove of small idols dedicated to her. Some caves were later transformed into monasteries. On the islands of Halki and Cyprus, wall paintings on the interiors of such natural monasteries survive from the Middle Ages. Above ground, trees and other flora abound on the islands in a stunning variety. ON Crete, a veritable forest of palm trees shades the beaches at Vai and Preveli, while the high, desolate plateaus of the interior gleam in the sunlight. Forest meets sea on the island of Poros, and on Thasos, many species of pine coexist. Cedars, cypress, oak, and chestnut trees blanket the mountainous interiors of Crete, Cyprus, and other large islands. Rhodes overflows with wildflowers during the summer months. Even a single island can be home to disparate natural wonders. Amorgos’ steep, rocky coastline gives way to tranquil bays. The scenery of Crete--the largest of the Greek Isles--ranges from majestic mountains and barren plateaus to expansive coves, fertile valleys, and wooded thickets.

Equipped with the right amount of dark matter, computer simulations reveal the formation of large regions of filamentary web-like networks of dark matter and hydrogen gas. At the nodes of these filaments, hydrogen gas coalesces, similar to water droplets on a spiderweb after a rainfall. It is in these regions, called protogalaxies, where hydrogen gas gets gravitationally concentrated into the first stars. Through nuclear fusion, the immense gravitational pressure in the star converts hydrogen into heavier elements. These first-generation stars can be up to one million times more massive than our sun. The first generation of stars lives on the order of one hundred million years and eventually dies through supernova explosions.

Imagine the love you feel for your child, and then multiply that by a thousand. Imagine what you felt the first time you gazed upon her, and knew that God had given you the most perfect gift to complete your life, and multiply that again. That is what you are to me. That is what I felt the first moment I saw you. Unlike humans, Breeds live for the small gifts, the little kindnesses fate would hand to us. We search for them. We cherish them. The moment I saw you, the animal inside me roared in triumph, the man melted in the face of the woman who stared back at him. "That was love, Rachel. It was acceptance, the knowledge that what I feared the most, what I ached for the most, was now standing before me, and reaching out for it, claiming it, could destroy everything I am." She shook her head desperately. "Love doesn't happen like that. It takes time. It builds." He nodded slowly. "It can happen like that. It can build slowly. It can come like a gentle rainfall, or it can slam into you like a tsunami. You are my tsunami, love.

A first question to ask before considering how farming affected the human body is why did farming develop in so many places and in such a short span of time after millions of years of hunting and gathering? There is no single answer to this question, but one factor might have been global climate change. The Ice Age ended 11,700 years ago, ushering in the Holocene epoch, which has not only been warmer than the Ice Age, but also more stable, with fewer extreme fluctuations in temperature and rainfall.2 During the Ice Age, hunter-gatherers sometimes attempted to cultivate plants through trial and error, but their experiments didn’t take root, perhaps

That spring, the skies at last broke open over Maidan Sabz. What came down was not the soft drizzle of years past but a great, great rainfall. Fat rain fell from the sky, and the village rose thirstily to meet it. All day, water drummed upon the roofs of Maidan Sabz and drowned all other sound from the world. Heavy, swollen raindrops rolled from the tips of leaves. The wells filled and the river rose. The hills to the east turned green. Wildflowers bloomed, and for the first time in many years children played on grass and cows grazed. Everyone rejoiced.

Pages 85-87: Lower Burma when first occupied … was a vast deltaic plain of swamp and jungle, with a secure rainfall; when the opening of the canal created a market for rice, this wide expanse of land was rapidly reclaimed by small cultivators … Formerly, the villager in Lower Burma, like peasants in general, cultivated primarily for home consumption, and it has always been the express policy of the Government to encourage peasant proprietorship. Land in the delta was abundant … The opening of the canal provided a certain and profitable market for as much rice as people could grow. … men from Upper Burma crowded down to join in the scramble for land. In two or three years a laborer could save out of his wages enough money to buy cattle and make a start on a modest scale as a landowner. … The land had to be cleared rapidly and hired labor was needed to fell the heavy jungle. In these circumstances newly reclaimed land did not pay the cost of cultivation, and there was a general demand for capital. Burmans, however, lacked the necessary funds, and had no access to capital. They did not know English or English banking methods, and English bankers knew nothing of Burmans or cultivation. … in the ports there were Indian moneylenders of the chettyar caste, amply provided with capital and long accustomed to dealing with European banks in India. About 1880 they began to send out agents into the villages, and supplied the people with all the necessary capital, usually at reasonable rates and, with some qualifications, on sound business principles. … now the chettyars readily supplied the cultivators with all the money that they needed, and with more than all they needed. On business principles the money lender preferred large transactions, and would advance not merely what the cultivator might require but as much as the security would stand. Naturally, the cultivator took all that he could get, and spent the surplus on imported goods. The working of economic forces pressed money on the cultivator; to his own discomfiture, but to the profit of the moneylenders, of European exporters who could ensure supplies by giving out advances, of European importers whose cotton goods and other wares the cultivator could purchase with the surplus of his borrowings, and of the banks which financed the whole economic structure. But at the first reverse, with any failure of the crop, the death of cattle, the illness of the cultivator, or a fall of prices, due either to fluctuations in world prices or to manipulation of the market by the merchants, the cultivator was sold up, and the land passed to the moneylender, who found some other thrifty laborer to take it, leaving part of the purchase price on mortgage, and with two or three years the process was repeated. … As time went on, the purchasers came more and more to be men who looked to making a livelihood from rent, or who wished to make certain of supplies of paddy for their business. … Others also, merchants and shopkeepers, bought land, because they had no other investment for their profits. These trading classes were mainly townsfolk, and for the most part Indians or Chinese. Thus, there was a steady growth of absentee ownership, with the land passing into the hands of foreigners. Usually, however, as soon as one cultivator went bankrupt, his land was taken over by another cultivator, who in turn lost with two or three years his land and cattle and all that he had saved. [By the 1930s] it appeared that practically half the land in Lower Burma was owned by absentees, and in the chief rice-producing districts from two-thirds to nearly three-quarters. … The policy of conserving a peasant proprietary was of no avail against the hard reality of economic forces…

it is hard work to open yourself up to release your burdens like removing thorns from your body, it may hurt at first, but it is ultimately for your highest good the dark clouds of rainfall are necessary for new growth

I rolled away from him with a gasp of laughter and hopped out of bed. “I need a shower.” Jack followed readily. I stopped short as I flipped on the switch in his bathroom, an immaculate well-lit space with contemporary cabinetry and modern stone vessel sinks. But it was the shower that left me speechless, a room made of glass and slate and granite, with rows of dials and knobs and thermostats. “Why is there a car wash in your bathroom?” Jack went past me, opened the glass door, and went inside. As he turned knobs and adjusted the temperature on digital screens, jets sprouted from every conceivable place, and steam collected in white drifts. Three rainfall streams came directly from the ceiling. “Aren’t you going to come in?” Jack’s voice filtered through the sound of abundant falling water. I went to the glass doorway and peeked inside. Jack was a magnificent sight, all bronzy and lean, a sheet of water glimmering over his skin. His stomach was drum-tight, his back gorgeous and sleekly muscled. “I hate to be the one to tell you this,” I said, “but you need to start exercising. A man your age shouldn’t let himself go.” He grinned and gestured for me to come to him. I ventured into the maelstrom of competing sprays, battered with heat from all directions. “I’m drowning,” I said, spluttering, and he pulled me out of the direct downpour of an overhead spray. “I wonder how much water we’re wasting.” “You know, Ella, you’re not the first woman who’s ever been in this shower with me—” “I’m shocked.” I leaned against him as he soaped my back. “— but you’re for damn sure the first one who’s ever worried about wasting water.” “How much, would you say?” “Ten gallons per minute, give or take.” “Oh my God. Hurry. We can’t stay in here long. We’ll throw the entire ecological system out of balance.” “This is Houston, Ella. The ecological system won’t notice.

The beetle, endemic to Africa’s Namib desert—where there is just 1.3 cm of rainfall a year—has inspired a few proof-of-concepts in the academic community, but this is the first time a self-filling water bottle has been proposed. The beetle survives by collecting condensation from the ocean breeze on the hardened shell of its wings. The shell is covered in tiny bumps that are water attracting (hydrophilic) at their tips and water-repelling (hydrophobic) at their sides. The beetle extends and aims the wings at incoming sea breezes to catch humid air; tiny droplets 15 to 20 microns in diameter eventually accumulate on its back and run straight down towards its mouth. NBD

For years I painted a beautiful picture of my homeland. I smudged the bigotry, ostracism, and narrow-mindedness of the Bible Belt and brightened it with colorful glasses of sweet tea, fresh, country hillsides, and southern hospitality. I erased the whiskey, the vitamin force-feeding, and the screaming fights that sent me crying and fleeing. I replaced them with sketches of a loving daddy who charitably tolerated me. I plastered tough love atop emotional indifference and neglect. I painted Mom with the unconditional nurturing that would wash away with the first light rainfall.

In the past 100 years alone, the region experienced three devastating droughts. The first stretched from 1910 to 1916; the second stretched from 1941 to 1945; and then came the worst of all droughts, a long period of sustained declining rainfall beginning in the late 1960s and known simply as the desiccation.6

The garden of the soul, she says, can be watered in several manners. The first, drawing the water up from a well by use of a bucket, entails a great deal of human effort. The second way, cranking a water wheel and having the water run through an aqueduct, involves less exertion and yields more water. The third entails far less effort, for in it the water enters the garden as by an effluence from river or stream. The fourth and final way is the best of all: as by a gentle but abundant rainfall the Lord himself waters the garden and the soul does not work at all.

IT WAS FULL DARK OUT NOW AND THE FIRST RUSH OF THE FREE night air roared into my lungs and out through my veins, calling my name with a thundering whisper of welcome and urging me on into the purring darkness, and we hurried to the car to ride away to happiness. But as we opened the car door and put one foot in, some small acid niggle twitched at our coattails and we paused; something was not right, and the frigid glee of our purpose slid off our back and onto the pavement like old snakeskin. Something was not right. I looked around me in the hot and humid Miami night. The neighborhood was just as it had always been; no sudden threat had sprung from the row of one-story houses with their toy-littered yards. There was nothing moving on our street, no one lurking in the shadows of the hedge, no rogue helicopter swooping down to strafe me—nothing. But still I heard that nagging trill of doubt. I took in a slow lungful of air through my nose. There was nothing to smell beyond the mingled odors of cooking, the tang of distant rainfall, the whiff of rotting vegetation that always lurked in the South Florida night. So what was wrong? What had set the tinny little alarm bells to clattering when I was finally out the door and free? I saw nothing, heard nothing, smelled nothing, felt nothing—but I had learned to trust the pesky whisper of warning, and I stood there unmoving, unbreathing, straining for an answer. And then a low row of dark clouds rumbled open overhead and revealed a small slice of silvery moon—a tiny, inadequate moon, a moon of no consequence at all, and we breathed out all the doubt. Of course—we were used to riding out into the wicked gleam of a full and bloated moon, slicing and slashing to the open-throated sound track of a big round choir in the sky. There was no such beacon overhead tonight, and it didn’t seem right somehow to gallop off into glee without it. But tonight was a special session, an impromptu raid into a mostly moonless evening, and in any case it must be done, would be done—but done as a solo cantata this time, a cascade of single notes without a backup singer. This small and wimpish quarter-moon was far too young to warble, but we could do very well without it, just this once. And

NAKED AND WARM   We lay together naked and warm. The light from the outside becomes more overcast with rain starting to trickle on the roof with the sound of a restful peace that draws us even closer. We lie together listening to the sounds of rainfall as a calm comfort cloaks our minds from all else. At times the sounds from the outside seem to perish into the distance as we lay in awe of each other, too in love to let go, she watching me as I quietly study her and the way that she exists when she is with me. I stare deep into her beautiful eyes with our limbs intertwined, answering her with my gentle traveling touch. Her small hands reach up and run across the bottom of my face and neck as my hands move gradually through her hair. I fall for her each time she looks at me, each time kissing her as if it were the first time. I open her mouth with mine as I seek to give all of myself to her again, time having for once become meaningless.

True Story:- Once upon a time, there was a man named Shree Om who, along with more than three hundred individuals, set out on a journey to visit the largest tulip garden in the world, located across various realms of the earth. This journey had been planned meticulously for many months. However, on that particular day, nature seemed to be against them. The sky was covered with dark clouds, and it was raining. Advanced weather monitoring systems from Space station had predicted heavy rainfall for the day. Nevertheless, Shree Om, with his compassionate nature, kindly order the king of the heaven, Indra, to intervene and temporarily stop the rain to prevent disruption to their plans. The dark clouds that veiled the sky and the pouring rain were dispelled by Shreeom's command, allowing everyone, including more than twenty thousands who had gathered from various places, to enjoy the vibrant colors of the flowers in the garden. Indra swiftly removed the clouds and cleared the sky to welcome the sun for Shreeom's arrival. SriOm told his first Yog to Pashupatinath (Bhabam), to the Sun and divinity in the beginning of his knowledge. Shreeom, at his will, could turn bodies of water into tranquil seas, rivers for bathing and swimming as well as to create Brahma, but at that moment, he chose to the humble path and cooperated with Mahalaxmi, the sun, moon, stars and various Devi Devtas to ensure harmony and sustenance in the universe. Shree Om is the Vishnu himself. Shree Om and Mahalaxmi represented the divine consort, illustrating the profound interconnectedness and balance in the cosmic universal order. Shreeom, along with Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva, the various gods and goddesses, and especially Mahalakshmi Bhavani, along with the sun, moon, and the constellations of stars, collectively uphold and create the entire universe.

The only way I could describe it was like the gentle bloom from Winter into Spring. Kissing Theo, properly kissing Theo, felt like the welcoming sensation of that first warm breeze after the cold, the soft rhythmic rainfall that helped plants to grow from the earth and helped the restless to finally rest. It felt like being welcomed home.

Colonial Policy and Practice: A Comparative Study of Burma and Netherlands India by J. S. Furnivall Quoting page 85-87: Lower Burma when first occupied … was a vast deltaic plain of swamp and jungle, with a secure rainfall; when the opening of the canal created a market for rice, this wide expanse of land was rapidly reclaimed by small cultivators … Formerly, the villager in Lower Burma, like peasants in general, cultivated primarily for home consumption, and it has always been the express policy of the Government to encourage peasant proprietorship. Land in the delta was abundant … The opening of the canal provided a certain and profitable market for as much rice as people could grow. … men from Upper Burma crowded down to join in the scramble for land. In two or three years a labourer could save out of his wages enough money to buy cattle and make a start on a modest scale as a landowner. … The land had to be cleared rapidly and hired labour was needed to fell the heavy jungle. In these circumstances newly reclaimed land did not pay the cost of cultivation, and there was a general demand for capital. Burmans, however, lacked the necessary funds, and had no access to capital. They did not know English or English banking methods, and English bankers knew nothing of Burmans or cultivation. … in the ports there were Indian moneylenders of the chettyar caste, amply provided with capital and long accustomed to dealing with European banks in India. About 1880 they began to send out agents into the villages, and supplied the people with all the necessary capital, usually at reasonable rates and, with some qualifications, on sound business principles. … now the chettyars readily supplied the cultivators with all the money that they needed, and with more than all they needed. On business principles the money lender preferred large transactions, and would advance not merely what the cultivator might require but as much as the security would stand. Naturally, the cultivator took all that he could get, and spent the surplus on imported goods. The working of economic forces pressed money on the cultivator; to his own discomfiture, but to the profit of the moneylenders, of European exporters who could ensure supplies by giving out advances, of European importers whose cotton goods and other wares the cultivator could purchase with the surplus of his borrowings, and of the banks which financed the whole economic structure. But at the first reverse, with any failure of the crop, the death of cattle, the illness of the cultivator, or a fall of prices, due either to fluctuations in world prices or to manipulation of the market by the merchants, the cultivator was sold up, and the land passed to the moneylender, who found some other thrifty labourer to take it, leaving part of the purchase price on mortgage, and with two or three years the process was repeated. … As time went on, the purchasers came more and more to be men who looked to making a livelihood from rent, or who wished to make certain of supplies of paddy for their business. … Others also, merchants and shopkeepers, bought land, because they had no other investment for their profits. These trading classes were mainly townsfolk, and for the most part Indians or Chinese. Thus, there was a steady growth of absentee ownership, with the land passing into the hands of foreigners. Usually, however, as soon as one cultivator went bankrupt, his land was taken over by another cultivator, who in turn lost with two or three years his land and cattle and all that he had saved. [By the 1930s] it appeared that practically half the land in Lower Burma was owned by absentees, and in the chief rice-producing districts from two-thirds to nearly three-quarters. … The policy of conserving a peasant proprietary was of no avail against the hard reality of economic forces…

Two men were traveling from one town to another. They came to a stream that had risen due to heavy rainfall. Just when they were about to cross the water, they noticed a young, beautiful woman standing there all alone, in need of help. One of the men immediately went to her side. He picked the woman up and carried her in his arms across the stream. Then he dropped her there, waved good-bye, and the two men went their way. During the rest of the trip, the second traveler was unusually silent and sullen, not responding to his friend’s questions. After several hours of sulking, unable to keep silent anymore, he said, “Why did you touch that woman? She could have seduced you! Men and women cannot come into contact like that!” The first man responded calmly, “My friend, I carried the woman across the stream, and that is where I left her. It is you who have been carrying her ever since.

the first Amazonians did avoid the Dilemma of Rainfall Physics. Speaking broadly, their solution was not to clear the forest but to replace it with one adapted to human use. They set up shop on the bluffs that mark the edge of high water—close enough to the river to fish, far enough to avoid the flood. And then, rather than centering their agriculture on annual crops, they focused on the Amazon’s wildly diverse assortment of trees. In his view, the Amazon’s first inhabitants laboriously cleared small plots with their stone axes. But rather than simply planting manioc and other annual crops in their gardens until the forest took them over, they planted selected tree crops along with the manioc and managed the transition. Of the 138 known domesticated plant species in the Amazon, more than half are trees.

Mencius said: “In good years, young men are mostly fine. In bad years, they’re mostly cruel and violent. It isn’t that Heaven endows them with such different capacities, only that their hearts are mired in such different situations. Think about barley: if you plant the seeds carefully at the same time and in same place, they’ll all sprout and grow ripe by summer solstice. If they don’t grow the same – it’s because of inequities in richness of soil, amounts of rainfall, or the care given them by farmers. And so, all members belonging to a given species of thing are the same. Why should humans be the lone exception? The sage and I – surely we belong to the same species of thing. “That’s why Master Lung said: Even if a cobbler makes a pair of sandals for feet he’s never seen, he certainly won’t make a pair of baskets. Sandals are all alike because feet are the same throughout all beneath Heaven. And all tongues savor the same flavors. Yi Ya was just the first to discover what our tongues savor. If taste differed by nature from person to person, the way horses and dogs differ by species from me, then how is it people throughout all beneath Heaven savor the tastes Yi Ya savored? People throughout all beneath Heaven share Yi Ya’s tastes, therefore people’s tongues are alike throughout all beneath Heaven. “It’s true for the ear too: people throughout all beneath Heaven share Maestro K’uang’s sense of music, therefore people’s ears are alike thoughout all beneath Heaven. And it’s no less true for the eye: no one throughout all beneath Heaven could fail to see the beauty of Lord Tu. If you can’t see his beauty, you simply haven’t eyes. “Hence it is said: All tongues savor the same flavors, all ears hear the same music, and all eyes see the same beauty. Why should the heart alone not be alike in us all? But what is it about our hearts that is alike? Isn’t it what we call reason and Duty? The sage is just the first to discover what is common to our hearts. Hence, reason and Duty please our hearts just like meat pleases our tongues.

The pane was a stream of moving darkness, and she watched it lighten to silver. It was the first rainfall since she had come to the city. In the dizziness of early morning and little sleep, Ani wondered what she would find outside, if the night and the water had washed it all away, the pasture, the walls, the guards, the palace, and left her with her name again standing in mud and darkness.