Rainfall Quotes

Trees, for example, carry the memory of rainfall. In their rings we read ancient weather—storms, sunlight, and temperatures, the growing seasons of centuries. A forest shares a history, which each tree remembers even after it has been felled.

Things could change, Gabe," Jonas went on. "Things could be different. I don't know how, but there must be some way for things to be different. There could be colors. And grandparents," he added, staring through the dimness toward the ceiling of his sleepingroom. "And everybody would have the memories." "You know the memories," he whispered, turning toward the crib. Garbriel's breathing was even and deep. Jonas liked having him there, though he felt guilty about the secret. Each night he gave memories to Gabriel: memories of boat rides and picnics in the sun; memories of soft rainfall against windowpanes; memories of dancing barefoot on a damp lawn. "Gabe?" The newchild stirred slightly in his sleep. Jonas looked over at him. "There could be love," Jonas whispered.

With all the destruction happening down there, it's so easy to forget the beauty that's up here. The sky is so beautiful after rainfall.

You, with your hands full of Earth and your head full of rainfall. How many hearts do you hold in your own?

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.

As he unlocked his front door, he could hear the phone ringing. It took him a few moments to get in - the wooden frame had swollen with all the rainfall, and the door got gummed up sometimes - but when he got in, it was still ringing. Must be urgent , he thought, absent-mindedly. He shouted, “Padfoot? You in?” as he crossed the the room, then lifted the receiver, “Hello?” “Hello? Hello, Remus, is that you?” “Mary? Hi! I just got back - where the hell is everybody?!” There was a strange silence on the end of the phone, and a horrible static prickle ran down his spine. “Mary?!” “You haven’t heard…” “Jesus Christ, Mary, what?!” “Remus… something awful has happened.” She started explaining, and Remus fell to his knees as the whole world began to fall apart.

So many things were testing his faith. There was the Bible, of course, but the Bible was a book, and so were Bleak House, Treasure Island, Ethan Frome and The Last of the Mohicans. Did it then seem probable, as he had once overheard Dunbar ask, that the answers to riddles of creation would be supplied by people too ignorant to understand the mechanics of rainfall? Had Almighty God, in all His infinite wisdom, really been afraid that men six thousand years ago would succeed in building a tower to heaven?

Love me...with all the abandon of a sudden wild rain.

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.

You see them in the mercury light of water, the expanding orbs of silver where trout breathe. You hear them in the sleepy kiss of rainfall on pine needles, smell them as if they were snow to the west.

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.

It is a contradiction this creek- a hundred thousand years old but renewed with each rainfall.

Complains are like the clouds that produce no rain no matter how thick they gather. Never depend on your complaint thinking they are stair cases. Drop that thing.

Grandfather’s Hands             Your grandfather’s hands were brown. Your grandmother kissed each knuckle,   circled an island into his palm and told him which parts they would share, which part they would leave alone.   She wet a finger to draw where the ocean would be on his wrist, kissed him there, named the ocean after herself.   Your grandfather’s hands were slow but urgent. Your grandmother dreamt them,   a clockwork of fingers finding places to own– under the tongue, collarbone, bottom lip, arch of foot.   Your grandmother names his fingers after seasons– index finger, a wave of heat, middle finger, rainfall.   Some nights his thumb is the moon nestled just under her rib. “Your grandparents often found themselves in dark rooms, mapping out each other’s bodies,   claiming whole countries with their mouths.

Water is the most versatile of all elements. It isn't afraid to burn in fire or fade into the sky, it doesn't hesitate to shatter against sharp rocks in rainfall or drown into the dark shroud of the earth. It exists beyond all eginnings and ends. On the surface nothing will shift, but deep in underground silence, water will hide and with soft fingers coax a new channel for itself, until stone gives in and slowly settles around the secret space. Death is water's close companion, and neither of them can be separated from us, for we are made of the versatilitiy of water and the closeness of death. Water doesn't belong to us, be we belong to water: when it has passed through our fingers and pores and bodies, nothing separates us from earth.

She fell into his arms like the rainfall over an ocean.

I see now how things even up, how they are squared away, and how they balance under the law of love and justice. No year of life is emotionally, spiritually or even materially, all drought or all rainfall; nor is it all sun. The road turns a little every day, and one day there's a sudden twist we didn't dream was there, and for every loss there is somewhere a gain, for every grief a happiness, for every deprivation a giving.

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.

Soon the trees affected not only her mood but her understanding. Each year a trunk put on a new ring of growth, and within those rings she found the tree's own story. She listened to the scent of it, the feel, the sound, and her mind gave it words- soil, water, sap, light...and before, night and rain, dry and sun, wind and night...the drowsy stillness of leaves in a rainfall, the sparkling eagerness of leaves in the sun, and always the pulling up of the branches, the tugging down of the roots, the forever growing in tow directions, joing sky and soil, and a center to keep it strong... -Rin, Forest Born

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.

This is how it feels in the split second you suddenly become aware that you’re falling in love with someone. The click of a jigsaw’s last piece, the rainfall of coins in a jackpot slot machine, the right song striking up and your being swept away by its opening bars. That conviction of making complete sense of the universe, in one moment. Of course. You’re where I should be. You’re here.

Don’t predict the condition of the entire day by the state of the morning. You don’t judge a book by its cover. A cloudy morning is no guarantee for a rainy day!

and because what we learn in the dark remains all our lives, a noise like the sea, displacing the day's pale knowledge, you'll come to yourself in a glimmer of rainfall or frost, the burnt smell of autumn, a meeting of parallel lines, and know you were someone else for the longest time, pretending you knew where you were, like a diffident tourist, lost on the one main square, and afraid to enquire.

The umbrella won't stop the rain, but it will help you to get out during rainfall. As well as confidence is not going to guarantee your success, but it will give you the opportunity to achieve it.

Rainbows are funny things, aren’t they? The harder it rains, the more beautifully they shine. Who knows? Maybe it’s a gift from God, for those who’ve endured the storms.

He knew something of sorrow, remembered joy, and devoutly hoped--as much as he consciously hoped for anything other than proper allotments of sunshine and rainfall--never again to encounter either of those two old annoyances.

What is this rainfall of children? Did I go sailing just to have storms of infants cascading down my sail at me? (p. 74)

The mist after rain, uninterrupted rainfall on rooftops, pitter-patter intellect. The thoughts I leave behind like footsteps.

No struggle, no success! The strongest thunder strikes often bring the heaviest rainfall! The weight of your fulfillment depends on how wide you cast your nets!

true love had seemed like the grand prize, the one thing that could weather any storm, save you from both drudgery and fear, and writing about it had felt like the single most meaningful gift I could ever give. And even if that part of my worldview was taking a brief sabbatical, it had to be true that sometimes, heartbroken women found their happy endings, their rain-falling, music-swelling moments of pure happiness.

There was an ocean above us, held in by a thin sac that might rupture and let down a flood at any second.

There’s a passage in John Steinbeck’s “East of Eden” that does a pretty good job describing California’s rainfall patterns: The water came in a 30-year cycle. There would be five to six wet and wonderful years when there might be 19 to 25 inches of rain, and the land would shout with grass. Then would come six or seven pretty good years of 12 to 16 inches of rain. And then the dry years would come ...

I've been avoiding you because I'm just so damn annoyed..." He shakes his head, sloshing water. The strands brush his shoulders rhythmically. "I don't want you risking yourself again. The human world...Will. It's too dangerous." Cassian takes my hand. I feel his heartbeat through the simple touch, the thud of his life meeting with mine. "You dead...it would break me." His voice whips sharply over the drum of the rainfall. "Everything I ever said to you was the truth. My feelings haven't changed for you, Jacinda. Even if you drive me crazy, here, in the pride...you're still that single bright light for me.

Do it again and again. Consistency makes the rain drops to create holes in the rock. Whatever is difficult can be done easily with regular attendance, attention and action.

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.

LXVII INDOORS the fire is kindled; Beechwood is piled on the hearthstone; Cold are the chattering oak-leaves; And the ponds frost-bitten. Softer than rainfall at twilight, Bringing the fields benediction And the hills quiet and greyness, Are my long thoughts of thee. How should thy friend fear the seasons? They only perish of winter Whom Love, audacious and tender, Never hath visited.

True leaders are like statues, whether it rains or it shines, they never bend their necks to look backwards! They never run away from challenges!

Rain always seems to me like a thousand little kisses from Heaven. - Regen kommen mir doch immer vor wie tausend kleine Küsschen aus dem Himmel.

It's hard to escape the rain when it's inside your mind.

There is a way of walking through rain without getting hit by a single drop - you just have to find what it is.

Don’t kill yourself when your scorching sun intensifies; the very hot sun is a very good recipe for a heavy rainfall.

he had once overheard Dunbar ask, that the answers to the riddles of creation would be supplied by people too ignorant to understand the mechanics of rainfall?

I listen to the rainfall, my words wanna flow! Droplets run down the wall, where do they go? Letters in the raw, mesh together for the show!

There are some who relish the quiet life. Free of the frantic and discord. I used to be one of them; until my life got loud and dramatic, down right unbearable at moments. And now I love the volumes of my life. The adagio of my heart’s beating or the metronome of the rainfall. How can one expect to live without the welcome of the bird’s chirp in the morning or the night’s vehement winds pounding our window pane? The sound of joy, heartbreak, ecstasy. It is all for the fine tuning of our soul. We learn to calibrate the sounds of life. No more sensitivity, but making it all music. Go ahead, appreciate the soundtrack of your life. It makes for good dancing too.

The umbrella won't stop the rain, but it will help you to get out during rainfall. As well as confidence is not going to guarantee your success, but it will give you the opportunity to achieve it...

I read not so long ago about the construction of a large telescope in Chile's Atacama Desert, where rainfall can average a millimetre a year and the air is fifty times as dry as the air in Death Valley. Needless to say, skies over the Atacama are pristine. The pilgrim astronomer ventures to the earth’s ravaged reaches in order to peer more keenly at other worlds, and I suppose the novelist is up to something similar.

in about 5600 BC the Mount Mazama volcano in Oregon erupted, raining rock and burning ash for years, and leading to the many years of rainfall that eventually filled the volcanic crater today called Crater Lake.

trees shed their leaves not according to season, but according to rainfall. That before all of us there was something else. Eventually, something will take our place. I learn that I am a tiny piece of a miraculous world.

I seemed to be walking on and on forever through a peaceful, languid garden of rice paddies. This was no longer the territory of savages, but of an ancient and high civilization. Here and there farmers were plowing their fields, using water buffaloes. As a buffalo started to move, snowy herons would fly down and perch on its back and horns. But they flew away again in fright whenever a buffalo reached the edge of the field the farmer turned his plow. Once, as I was walking along, a moist wind began to blow and the sky quickly filled with black clouds. Herons were tossing in the wind like downy feathers. Soon the rain came. Rainfall in Burma is violent. Before I knew it, I was shut in by a thick spray. I could hardly breathe--I felt as if I were swimming. After a while the rain stopped and the sky cleared. All at once the landscape brightened and a vast rainbow hung across the sky. The mist was gone, as if a curtain had been lifted. And there, under the rainbow, the farmers were singing and plowing again.

It's a bit like sympathetic magic in a way: the usual Western presumption that 'primitive' rituals mimic what they desire to achieve--that phallic objects might be believed to increase male potency and playacting rainfall might somehow bring it about. I am suspicious of such obvious connections and I suspect that the connections among things, people, and processes can be equally irrational. I sense the world might be more dreamlike, metaphorical, and poetic than we currently believe--but just as irrational as sympathetic magic when looked at in a typically scientific way. I wouldn't be surprised if poetry--poetry in the broadest sense, in the sense of a world filled with metaphor, rhyme, and recurring patterns, shapes, and designs--is how the world works. The world isn't logical, it's a song.

the truth is, it’s never too late to start on your dreams. The present is the best time to launch yourself forward.

I have spoken of the rich years when the rainfall was plentiful. But there were dry years too, and they put a terror on the valley. The water came in a thirty-year cycle. There would be five or six wet and wonderful years when there might be nineteen to twenty-five inches of rain, and the land would shout with grass. Then would come six or seven pretty good years of twelve to sixteen inches of rain. And then the dry years would come, and sometimes there would be only seven or eight inches of rain. The land dried up and the grasses headed out miserably a few inches high and great bare scabby places appeared in the valley. The live oaks got a crusty look and the sage-brush was gray. The land cracked and the springs dried up and the cattle listlessly nibbled dry twigs. Then the farmers and the ranchers would be filled with disgust for the Salinas Valley. The cows would grow thin and sometimes starve to death. People would have to haul water in barrels to their farms just for drinking. Some families would sell out for nearly nothing and move away. And it never failed that during the dry years the people forgot about the rich years, and during the wet years they lost all memory of the dry years. It was always that way.

The sky is scrubbed fresh and stark blue by the gone rain, but every trace of that water has evaporated from the earth around them. It feels like a dream, all that rainfall. 'This is a cycle,' she thinks. Every day a fresh horror, and when it's over, this feeling of surreal detachment. A disbelief, almost, in what they just endured. The mind is magical. Human beings are magical.

Paid product endorsements, especially by real or purported experts, constitute a steady rainfall of deception. They betray contempt for the intelligence of their customers. They introduce an insidious corruption of popular attitudes about scientific objectivity.

On 23 June 1757, marching through a drenching rainfall at the head of 900 Englishmen of the 39th Foot and 2000 Indian sepoys, an audacious general named Robert Clive routed the army of a troublesome Nawab in the rice paddies outside a Bengali village called Plassey.

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.

Now, how far away did Abingdon Square feel, as though it and she and the restaurant, and Maria Malibran, and the sudden false rainfall by the flickering lights of the Miramar hotel sign belonged to another life, a life unlived, a life I knew had turned its back to me and was being nailed to the wall.

The door is cracked We used to meet like water does land no not that more like when skin touches skin kissing fingertips or when air escapes a lung and is felt across the world I've leapt over cracks in sidewalks and swallowed away troublesome back pains that could only be fixed with someone else's pills We met by your house one stray day and you drove me to the bay where we sat and kissed like it was yesterday And here you told me that you loved me and that you always loved me and that you would always love me the wind blew and I held you You rested your head on my shoulder and the wind blew warm Later, in your big red truck, we smoked some green and I kissed you harder and held your breasts, and felt between your legs and with a gasp you told me you were in love with me And then you drove me back and we promised it wouldn't be the end not this time The quill and inkwell on your foot I'm a writer and you are my greatest art I returned to my hell and dreamt of you once more

Snowfall isn’t like rainfall. Rain is passion. It’s a scream. It’s my hair sticking to my face as I wrap my arms around him. It’s spontaneous, and it’s loud. Snowfall is like a secret. It’s whispers and firelight and searching for his warmth between the sheets at two a.m. when the rest of the house is asleep.

Snowfall isn’t like rainfall. Rain is passion. It’s a scream. It’s my hair sticking to my face as I wrap my arms around him. It’s spontaneous, and it’s loud. Snowfall is like a secret. It’s whispers and firelight and searching for his warmth between the sheets at two a.m. when the rest of the house is asleep. It’s holding him tightly and loving him slowly.

One good thing about the rain is that it is not only destructive, in that it can bring dead plants back to life.

She asked why it happens? Keeps happening? What exact regime teaches males to take what isn’t given? What riles them?

Paid product endorsements, especially by real or purported experts, constitute a steady rainfall of deception. They betray contempt for the intelligence of their customers

the goddess knew that her daughter had been taken, and tore her hair into utter disorder, and repeatedly struck her breasts with the palms of both hands. With her daughter’s location a mystery still, she reproaches the whole earth as ungrateful, unworthy her gift of grain crops, and Sicily more than the others, where she has discovered the proof of her loss; and so it was here that her fierce hand shattered the earth-turning plows, here that the farmers and cattle perished alike, and here that she bade the plowed fields default on their trust by blighting the seeds in their keeping. Sicilian fertility, which had been everywhere famous, was given the lie when the crops died as they sprouted, now ruined by too much heat, and now by too heavy a rainfall; stars and winds harmed them, and the greedy birds devoured the seed as it was sown; the harvest of wheat was defeated by thorns and darnels and unappeasable grasses.

Reaction time Touch the underside of a penny you find on the street Doesn't feel any different unless you close your eyes I can taste the copper in my mouth now seeping from between my teeth There's an explanation I'm sure all this blood it's from all the times I held the glass too close And forgot to tip the dancer A storm just passed and like every other one that came before it I was left unharmed The dogs are all barking and the cats hiding in the basement And the sky is colored that bright yellow glow makes it feel like you're wearing sunglasses that you can't take off Wherever you are now it's not here because I missed it I missed the show I missed the curtain call And forever more I am cursed like a blanket without a body to keep warm

If anyone reading this message is going through dark, difficult times, I hope my story has given you some small encouragement. Even when the future seems utterly hopeless, when you feel like you’re all alone in the world, I have faith that each and every one of us is dearly beloved to someone else. May the dreary days of rain soon give way to a brilliant rainbow arching high across the sky for us all.

The global aid community is mobilised into fighting drought in a district that gets 1,500 mm of rainfall annually. The reverse spiral begins. Donor governments love emergency relief. It forms a negligible part of their spending, but makes for great advertising. (Emergencies of many sorts do this, not just drought. You can run television footage of the Marines kissing babies in Somalia.) There are more serious issues between rich and poor nations—like unequal trade. Settling those would be of greater help to the latter. But for that, the ‘donors’ would have to part with something for real. No. They prefer emergency relief.

SOUTH AMERICA’S GREAT Atacama Desert is a place unlike any other. Its climate is different, with close to zero rainfall but occasional thick fogs. Its plants and animals are different—what there are of them, which is to say almost none—capable of living with almost no water. Even its rocks are different. The floor of the Atacama is crusted and shot through with a riot of strange chemicals: nitrates, chromates, and dichromates; perchlorates, iodates, sulfates, and borates; chlorides of potassium, magnesium, and calcium; minerals “so extraordinary,” a researcher wrote, “were it not for their existence, geologists could easily conclude that such deposits could not form in nature.” How

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?

Once my father told me: When a Jew prays, he is asking God a question that has no end. Darkness fell. Rain fell. I never asked: What question? And now it's too late. Because I lost you, Tateh. One day, in the spring of 1938, on a rainy day that gave way to a break in the clouds, I lost you. You'd gone out to collect specimens for a theory you were hatching about rainfall, instinct, and butterflies. And then you were gone. We found you lying under a tree, your face splashed with mud. We knew you were free then, unbound by disappointing results. And we buried you in the cemetery where your father was buried, and his father, under the shade of the chestnut tree. Three years later, I lost Mameh. The last time I saw her she was wearing her yellow apron. She was stuffing things in a suitcase, the house was a wreck. She told me to go into the woods. She'd packed me food, and told me to wear my coat, even though it was July. "Go," she said. I was too old to listen, but like a child I listened. She told me she'd follow the next day. We chose a spot we both knew in the woods. The giant walnut tree you used to like, Tateh, because you said it had human qualities. I didn't bother to say goodbye. I chose to believe what was easier. I waited. But. She never came. Since then I've lived with the guilt of understanding too late that she thought she would have been a burden to me. I lost Fitzy. He was studying in Vilna, Tateh—someone who knew someone told me he'd last been seen on a train. I lost Sari and Hanna to the dogs. I lost Herschel to the rain. I lost Josef to a crack in time. I lost the sound of laughter. I lost a pair of shoes, I'd taken them off to sleep, the shoes Herschel gave me, and when I woke they were gone, I walked barefoot for days and then I broke down and stole someone else's. I lost the only woman I ever wanted to love. I lost years. I lost books. I lost the house where I was born. And I lost Isaac. So who is to say that somewhere along the way, without my knowing it, I didn't also lose my mind?

[John] Dalton was a man of regular habits. For fifty-seven years he walked out of Manchester every day; he measured the rainfall, the temperature—a singularly monotonous enterprise in this climate. Of all that mass of data, nothing whatever came. But of the one searching, almost childlike question about the weights that enter the construction of these simple molecules—out of that came modern atomic theory. That is the essence of science: ask an impertinent question, and you are on the way to the pertinent answer.

Compare the air to a forest. When forest fires occur regularly, there is less fuel for any one fire, so the burns don't become conflagrations. If you prevent forest fires and build up a huge mass of living and dead wood in the forest, when a burn at last occurs, it is likely to be serious and large. When increased atmospheric carbon warms the air and when more vapor is available, conflagrational storms become more likely. [...] Will the pattern of storms be seen in the future as an anomaly? Or with so much more water vapor in the air, is it now normal? 'Everyone talks about global warming,' said Gavin Schmidt, head of the NASA climate models at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, 'but changes in rainfall often have a bigger impact. We're forcing the climate into a state we have not seen for millions of years

. . . what seems to be an isolated patch of blue mist floats lightly on the glare of the horizon. This is the peninsula of Azuera, a wild chaos of sharp rocks and stony levels cut about by vertical ravines. It lies far out to sea like a rough head of stone stretched from a green-clad coast at the end of a slender neck of sand covered with thickets of thorny scrub. Utterly waterless, for the rainfall runs off at once on all sides into the sea, it has not soil enough—it is said—to grow a single blade of grass, as if it were blighted by a curse. The poor, associating by an obscure instinct of consolation the ideas of evil and wealth, will tell you that it is deadly because of its forbidden treasures. The common folk of the neighbourhood, peons of the estancias, vaqueros of the seaboard plains, tame Indians coming miles to market with a bundle of sugar-cane or a basket of maize worth about threepence, are well aware that heaps of shining gold lie in the gloom of the deep precipices cleaving the stony levels of Azuera. Tradition has it that many adventurers of olden time had perished in the search.

It commenced raining one day and did not stop for two months. We went through ever different kind of rain they is, cep'n maybe sleet or hail. It was little tiny stinging rain sometimes, an big ole fat rain at others. It came sidewise an straight down an sometimes even seem to stand up from the ground. Nevertheless, we was expected to do our shit, which was mainly walking upland down the hills an stuff looking for gooks.

You know the word mingyun, right? Your personal destiny in this life? Think about the two characters that make up the word. Ming is the inherent nature of your life as given to you by the gods. It's a destiny that can't be changed, the way the innate characteristics you are born with can't be changed. But what is yun? Yun is where flexibility comes in. Yun is fortune that changes with the seasons of the universe but can also turn depending on the actions you take, the choices you make. Together ming and yun make up a river, one that wants to carry you to a particular destination but moves fluidly, possibly diverging if a tree falls along its path or a large rainfall swells its banks. You, too, can change the path of the river; you can even swim upstream if you want to. Just expect it will be tiring, not as easy as moving with the current.

Gaia giveth even as she taketh away. The warming of the global climate over the past century had melted permafrost and glaciers, shifted rainfall patterns, altered animal migratory routes, disrupted agriculture, drowned cities, and similarly necessitated a thousand thousand adjustments, recalibrations and hasty retreats. But humanity's unintentional experiment with the biosphere had also brought some benefits. Now we could grow oysters in New England. Six hundred years ago, oysters flourished as far north as the Hudson. Native Americans had accumulated vast middens of shells on the shores of what would become Manhattan. Then, prior to the industrial age, there was a small climate shift, and oysters vanished from those waters. Now, however, the tasty bivalves were back, their range extending almost to Maine. The commercial beds of the Cape Cod Archipelago produced shellfish as good as any from the heyday of Chesapeake Bay. Several large wikis maintained, regulated and harvested these beds, constituting a large share of the local economy. But as anyone might have predicted, wherever a natural resource existed, sprawling and hard of defense, poachers would be found.

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.

A Tomorrow Better Than Today.” It may feel like it’s raining, But don’t forget that Behind dark clouds there’s sunshine shining. It may seem hopeless, But don’t forget that Behind failure there’s always opportunity. It would seem that everything is over, But remember that The end is a new beginning.

She thinks of her own remote, wild place, full of noisy, big-eyed creatures of its own. It feels almost impossible that the cloud forest still exists. She wants to close her eyes and travel back there. Wants to feel the cool softness of the clouds against her cheeks and eyelashes. She wants to hear the echoing drips of rainfall spattering among the big, fat leaves. The memory of that bright, liquid, ethereal place is fading from her grasp. When she closes her eyes now, she cannot recall the sound of her abuela’s singing or the smell of the chilate. It’s all been obliterated from her, and the grief of that eradication feels like a weight she must carry in her limbs.

She is soft, but knows when to stand her ground. Natural disasters aren't a mistake. They're not just a big ol' whoopsy that happened when Mother Nature and Source were planning their calendars out. Mother nature is intentional. Everything about her is intentional. Every rainfall, is intentional. Every sunny day, is intentional. Every storm, is intentional and every natural disaster is intentional. She will roar when she needs, when she needs us to take a closer look. That's what natural disasters are. She won't rob us of our opportunity to rise up together- that's our evolution and she's not gonna do our dirty (epic) work for us. But she will nudge us. And she does nudge us. Do you notice? If we don't do our best to take care of global warming, the tides will rise and beach side cities will be wiped. Perhaps our kids or our kids' kids won't ever see the glaciers of today. She's not gonna cover up for us, but she will love us on our journey and gives us clues and signs. It's up to us to pay attention.

Having a rough time on the trail is not the same as the irredeemable frustrations of urban life, such as being stuck in traffic or wading through a crowded store. Difficulty on the trail, like this long and rainy day, is usually reflected upon fondly. There is the soothing, rhythmic beat of rainfall, the feeling that the woods are being washed and rejuvenated, the odors of the woods awakened by moisture. There is appreciation for the most simple of things, such as a flat and dry piece of ground and something warm to eat. There is satisfaction in having endured hardship, pride in being able to do for myself in the outdoors. There is strength in knowing I can do it again tomorrow.

There was the Bible, of course, but the Bible was a book, and so were Bleak House, Treasure Island, Ethan Frome and The Last of the Mohicans. Did it indeed seem probable, as he had once overheard Dunbar ask, that the answers to the riddles of creation would be supplied by people too ignorant to understand the mechanics of rainfall? Had Almighty God, in all His infinite wisdom, really been afraid that men six thousand years ago would succeed in building a tower to heaven? Where the devil was heaven? Was it up? Down? There was no up or down in a finite but expanding universe in which even the vast, burning, dazzling, majestic sun was in a state of progressive decay that would eventually destroy the earth too.

The sky is scrubbed fresh and stark blue by the gone rain, but every trace of that water has evaporated from the earth around them. It feels like a dream, all that rainfall. This is a cycle, she thinks. Every day a fresh horror, and when it’s over, this feeling of surreal detachment. A disbelief, almost, in what they just endured. The mind is magical. Human beings are magical.

Sea, autumnal sweetness, islands bathed in light, diaphanous cloak of delicate rainfall clothing Greece’s eternal bareness. “Happy the person,” I thought, “who is deemed worthy, before dying, to sail the Aegean.” This world offers many pleasures: women, fruit, ideas. But I think no pleasure exists that plunges a person’s heart into Paradise more than the joy of cutting across this sea on a gentle autumn day, murmuring the name of each island. Nowhere else are you transported from truth to dream with such serenity and ease. Boundaries fade; the mast of even the most dilapidated ship sprouts buds and grapes. Here in Greece, truly, necessity blossoms most certainly into miracle. Kazantzakis, Nikos. Zorba the Greek (p. 23). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.

Early naturalists talked often about “deep time”—the perception they had, contemplating the grandeur of this valley or that rock basin, of the profound slowness of nature. But the perspective changes when history accelerates. What lies in store for us is more like what aboriginal Australians, talking with Victorian anthropologists, called “dreamtime,” or “everywhen”: the semi-mythical experience of encountering, in the present moment, an out-of-time past, when ancestors, heroes, and demigods crowded an epic stage. You can find it already by watching footage of an iceberg collapsing into the sea—a feeling of history happening all at once. It is. The summer of 2017, in the Northern Hemisphere, brought unprecedented extreme weather: three major hurricanes arising in quick succession in the Atlantic; the epic “500,000-year” rainfall of Hurricane Harvey, dropping on Houston a million gallons of water for nearly every single person in the entire state of Texas; the wildfires of California, nine thousand of them burning through more than a million acres, and those in icy Greenland, ten times bigger than those in 2014; the floods of South Asia, clearing 45 million from their homes. Then the record-breaking summer of 2018 made 2017 seem positively idyllic. It brought an unheard-of global heat wave, with temperatures hitting 108 in Los Angeles, 122 in Pakistan, and 124 in Algeria. In the world’s oceans, six hurricanes and tropical storms appeared on the radars at once, including one, Typhoon Mangkhut, that hit the Philippines and then Hong Kong, killing nearly a hundred and wreaking a billion dollars in damages, and another, Hurricane Florence, which more than doubled the average annual rainfall in North Carolina, killing more than fifty and inflicting $17 billion worth of damage. There were wildfires in Sweden, all the way in the Arctic Circle, and across so much of the American West that half the continent was fighting through smoke, those fires ultimately burning close to 1.5 million acres. Parts of Yosemite National Park were closed, as were parts of Glacier National Park in Montana, where temperatures also topped 100. In 1850, the area had 150 glaciers; today, all but 26 are melted.

Have you heard the songs they sing here in Kilanga?” he asked. “They’re very worshipful. It’s a grand way to begin a church service, singing a Congolese hymn to the rainfall on the seed yams. It’s quite easy to move from there to the parable of the mustard seed. Many parts of the Bible make good sense here, if only you change a few words.” He laughed. “And a lot of whole chapters, sure, you just have to throw away.” “Well, it’s every bit God’s word, isn’t it?” Leah said. “God’s word, brought to you by a crew of romantic idealists in a harsh desert culture eons ago, followed by a chain of translators two thousand years long." Leah stared at him. “Darling, did you think God wrote it all down in the English of King James himself?” “No, I guess not.” “Think of all the duties that were perfectly obvious to Paul or Matthew in that old Arabian desert that are pure nonsense to us now. All that foot washing, for example. Was it really for God’s glory, or just to keep the sand out of the house?” Leah sat narrow-eyed in her chair, for once stumped for the correct answer. “Oh, and the camel. Was it a camel that could pass through the eye of a needle more easily than a rich man? Or a coarse piece of yarn? The Hebrew words are the same, but which one did they mean? If it’s a camel, the rich man might as well not even try. But if it’s the yarn, he might well succeed with a lot of effort, you see?” He leaned forward toward Leah with his hands on his knees. “Och, I shouldn’t be messing about with your thinking this way, with your father out in the garden. But I’ll tell you a secret. “When I want to take God at his word exactly, I take a peep out the window at His Creation. Because that, darling, He makes fresh for us every day, without a lot of dubious middle managers.

Cabin and cosmos, sun and home, and a garden full of radishes and Swiss chard. So much I hadn’t had for a long time, yet I missed Jens and the dogs and the feel of sea ice under me; I missed lions roaring and picking thorns from my feet in Africa. In both Africa and Greenland, I’d seen the two root causes of climate change: degraded and desertified earth caused by ineffectual rainfall, and the loss of albedo because of the disappearance of snow and ice.

We are living in a simulation, I told myself, as the trolley stopped a block from my apartment, but this fell so far short of, well, of the reality, for lack of a better word. I couldn’t convince myself. I didn’t believe it. There was a scheduled rainfall in—I glanced at my watch—two minutes. I stepped out of the trolley and walked very slowly, on purpose. I’ve always loved rain, and knowing that it isn’t coming from clouds doesn’t make me love it less.

We did find fresh water; rainfall had collected in a sort of rock bowl not too far from a gnarled tree. It was a bit mucky, which the embarrassed harpooner was more than eager to point out, but Norrigal assured us it would serve if we could find something to boil it in. I couldn’t restrain myself from saying, “Of course, those of us who prefer drinking urine are under no obligation to stop.” That earned me a loveless sideways glance from old Gormalin, but Norrigal’s snort more than made up for that.

~Posters with torn edges hanging from rotten walls~ The doctor told me something once she said STOP DRINKING I slapped her across the face with this NO I walked right out of that office went right down to the hole I told the bartender WHISKEY, MOTHERFUCKER he poured and he poured and I slapped my money down on that bar the man I had been driving around with he just sort of sat there next to this hooker she probably had something rotten way down there between her legs her eyes told of no soul I emptied the bottle down my throat and ordered some chips the bartender told me THEY'RE STALE and I give him a I DON'T FUCKIN' CARE, GIVE ME SOMETHIN' He slid me a ham sandwich dripping with cheap low-fat mayo and said ENJOY I went back to my room and talked all night so much conversation it turned the toilet bowl pale

Depending on where it falls, the prognosis for a water molecule varies widely. If it lands in fertile soil it will be soaked up by plants or reevaporated directly within hours or days. If it finds its way down to the groundwater, however, it may not see sunlight again for many years—thousands if it gets really deep. When you look at a lake, you are looking at a collection of molecules that have been there on average for about a decade. In the ocean the residence time is thought to be more like a hundred years. Altogether about 60 percent of water molecules in a rainfall are returned to the atmosphere within a day or two. Once evaporated, they spend no more than a week or so—Drury says twelve days—in the sky before falling again as rain. Evaporation is a swift process, as you can easily gauge by the fate of a puddle on a summer’s day. Even something as large as the Mediterranean would dry out in a thousand years if it were not continually replenished. Such an event occurred a little under six million years ago and provoked what is known to science as the Messinian Salinity Crisis. What happened was that continental movement closed the Strait of Gibraltar. As the Mediterranean dried, its evaporated contents fell as freshwater rain into other seas, mildly diluting their saltiness—indeed, making them just dilute enough to freeze over larger areas than normal. The enlarged area of ice bounced back more of the Sun’s heat and pushed Earth into an ice age. So at least the theory goes. What is certainly true, as far as we can tell, is that a little change in the Earth’s dynamics can have repercussions beyond our imagining. Such an event, as we shall see a little further on, may even have created us.

We discover the bumps are milpa, small mounds of earth on which complementary crops were planted. Unlike linear plowing, which encourages water runoff and soil erosion, the circular pattern traps rainfall. Each mound is planted with a cluster of the Three Sisters that were the staples of Indian agriculture: corn, beans, and squash. The corn provided a stalk for the beans to climb, while also shading the vulnerable beans. The ground cover from the squash stabilized the soil, and the bean roots kept the soil fertile by providing nitrogen. As a final touch, marigolds and other natural pesticides were planted around each mound to keep harmful insects away. Altogether it was a system so perfect that in some Central American countries too poor to adopt linear plowing with machinery, artificial pesticides, and monocrops of agribusiness, the same milpa have been producing just fine for four thousand years. 19 Not only that, but milpa can be planted in forests without clear-cutting the trees; at most, by removing a few branches to let sunlight through on a mound. This method was a major reason why three-fifths of all food staples in the world were developed in the Americas.

The country, it seemed, was on the verge of a second civil war, this one over industrial slavery. But Frick was a gambler who cared little what the world thought of him. He was already a villain in the public’s eye, thanks to a disaster of epic proportions three years earlier. Frick and a band of wealthy friends had established the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club on land near an unused reservoir high in the hills above the small Pennsylvania city of Johnstown, 70 miles east of Pittsburgh. The club beautified the grounds around the dam but paid little attention to the dam itself, which held back the Conemaugh River and was in poor condition from years of neglect. On May 31, 1889, after heavy rainfall, the dam gave way, releasing nearly 5 billion gallons of water from Lake Conemaugh into Johnstown and killing 2,209 people. What became known as the Johnstown Flood caused $17 million in damages. Frick’s carefully crafted corporate structure for the club made it impossible for victims to pursue the financial assets of its members. Although he personally donated several thousands of dollars to relief efforts, Frick remained to many a scoundrel, the prototype of the uncaring robber baron of the Gilded Age.

I have spoken of the rich years when the rainfall was plentiful. But there were dry youeras too, and they put a terror on the valley. The water came in a thirty-year cycle. There would be five or six wet and wonderful years when there might be nineteen to twenty-five inches of rain, and the land would shout with grass. Then would come six or seven pretty good years of twelve to sixten inches of rain. And then the dry yars would come, and sometimes thre would be only seven or eight inches of rain. The land dried up and the grasses headed out miserably a few inches high and great bare scabby places appeared in the valley. The live oaks got a crusty look and the sage-brush was gray. The land cracked and the springs dried up and the cattle listlessly nibbled dry twigs. Then the farmers and the ranchers would be filled with disgust for the Salinas Valley. The cows would grow thin and sometimes starve to death. People would have to haul water in barrels to their farms just for drinking. Some families would sell out for nearly nothing and move away. And it never failed that during the dry years the people forgot about the rich years, and during the wet years they lost all memory of the dry years. It was always that way.

I do love Oregon." My gaze wanders over the quiet, natural beauty surrounding us, which isn't limited to just this garden. "Being near the river, and the ocean, and the rocky mountains, and all this nature ... the weather." He chuckles. "I've never met anyone who actually loves rain. It's kind of weird. But cool, too," he adds quickly, as if afraid to offend me. "I just don't get it." I shrug. "It's not so much that I love rain. I just have a healthy respect for what if does. People hate it, but the world needs rain. It washes away dirt, dilutes the toxins in the air, feeds drought. It keeps everything around us alive." "Well, I have a healthy respect for what the sun does," he counters with a smile." "I'd rather have the sun after a good, hard rainfall." He just shakes his head at me but he's smiling. "The good with the bad?" "Isn't that life?" He frowns. "Why do I sense a metaphor behind that?" "Maybe there is a metaphor behind that." One I can't very well explain to him without describing the kinds of things I see every day in my life. The underbelly of society - where twisted morals reign and predators lurk, preying on the lost, the broken, the weak, the innocent. Where a thirteen-year-old sells her body rather than live under the same roof as her abusive parents, where punks gang-rape a drunk girl and then post pictures of it all over the internet so the world can relive it with her. Where a junkie mom's drug addiction is readily fed while her children sit back and watch. Where a father is murdered bacause he made the mistake of wanting a van for his family. In that world, it seems like it's raining all the time. A cold, hard rain that seeps into clothes, chills bones, and makes people feel utterly wretched. Many times, I see people on the worst day of their lives, when they feel like they're drowing. I don't enjoy seeing people suffer. I just know that if they make good choices, and accept the right help, they'll come out of it all the stronger for it. What I do enjoy comes after. Three months later, when I see that thirteen-year-old former prostitute pushing a mower across the front lawn of her foster home, a quiet smile on her face. Eight months later, when I see the girl who was raped walking home from school with a guy who wants nothing from her but to make her laugh. Two years later, when I see the junkie mom clean and sober and loading a shopping cart for the kids that the State finally gave back to her. Those people have seen the sun again after the harshest rain, and they appreciate it so much more.

Of all the plants, trees have the largest surface area covered in leaves. For every square yard of forest, 27 square yards of leaves and needles blanket the crowns. Part of every rainfall is intercepted in the canopy and immediately evaporates again. In addition, each summer, trees use up to 8,500 cubic yards of water per square mile, which they release into the air through transpiration. This water vapor creates new clouds that travel farther inland to release their rain. As the cycle continues, water reaches even the most remote areas. This water pump works so well that the downpours in some large areas of the world, such as the Amazon basin, are almost as heavy thousands of miles inland as they are on the coast. There are a few requirements for the pump to work: from the ocean to the farthest corner, there must be forest. And, most importantly, the coastal forests are the foundations for this system. If they do not exist, the system falls apart. Scientists credit Anastassia Makarieva from Saint Petersburg in Russia for the discovery of these unbelievably important connections. They studied different forests around the world and everywhere the results were the same. It didn't matter if they were studying a rain forest or the Siberian taiga, it was always the trees that were transferring life-giving moisture into land-locked interiors. Researchers also discovered that the whole process breaks down if coastal forests are cleared. It's a bit like if you were using an electrical pump to distribute water and you pulled the intake pipe out of the pond. The fallout is already apparent in Brazil, where the Amazonian rain forest is steadily drying out. Central Europe is within the 400-mile zone and, therefore, close enough to the intake area. Thankfully, there are still forests here, even if they are greatly diminished.

She came towards me with a juicy gash between her legs that smelled like my best friend's sister" Just when I thought I'd escaped them all She comes reeling herself in pulling at my strings her hand quick to find my zipper She moaned the way a drunk old lady does And I wasn't even inside her yet "You don't have anywhere else to be," she managed to say... "My wounds have been reopened tonight already," I muttered I caught wind of the gully ...the part of her she once kept sacred as a Christian I smelled the information I lifted my hand into the air and hailed a cab He rolled down his window and saw her "Find another cab," he said, and sped off into the night I took her home because she said she was lonely really she was drunk off something some memory or some choice she walked funny... -one of her heels had broken On the couch I left her, Before I could go, she grabbed my cock I slapped her across the face and she pulled harder Her eyes stayed closed Her lips dripped Her grip clenched I wasn't getting out of this one unscathed "If I take my pants off, will you let me go?" I asked "If you take your pants off, I'll be suckin' that cock till you pass out from all the screamin'..." I slapped her again, because she needed it She laughed Saying her cousin beat her harder Saying her father knew how to really... ...make things happen I asked her what her father's number was Let's get his motherfucking self up here to take you away, that's what I said She said he died, or killed himself "What's the difference really," she said, chewing on her hair She let go of my cock on her own accord And she opened her eyes for a moment She closed them again And I could tell she was sleeping Her eyes opened once more Her face red where I'd hit her She tasted the blood on her lip "Do you think if we remind ourselves enough, we can make up for all the pain we've caused others?" I said to her, "We can't. All we can do is keep ourselves from all those who don't deserve it.

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.

AS WE REACQUAINT OURSELVES WITH OUR BREATHING BODIES, then the perceived world itself begins to shift and transform. When we begin to consciously frequent the wordless dimension of our sensory participations, certain phenomena that have habitually commanded our focus begin to lose their distinctive fascination and to slip toward the background, while hitherto unnoticed or overlooked presences begin to stand forth from the periphery and to engage our awareness. The countless human artifacts with which we are commonly involved—the asphalt roads, chain-link fences, telephone wires, buildings, lightbulbs, ballpoint pens, automobiles, street signs, plastic containers, newspapers, radios, television screens—all begin to exhibit a common style, and so to lose some of their distinctiveness; meanwhile, organic entities—crows, squirrels, the trees and wild weeds that surround our house, humming insects, streambeds, clouds and rainfalls—all these begin to display a new vitality, each coaxing the breathing body into a unique dance. Even boulders and rocks seem to speak their own uncanny languages of gesture and shadow, inviting the body and its bones into silent communication. In contact with the native forms of the earth, one’s senses are slowly energized and awakened, combining and recombining in ever-shifting patterns.

Summer days and junior year, you are my sunshine that brightens up my full moon; we are going to soar together, we will not need to wish upon a star because our dreams will, at last, become true. There may be dark clouds overhead, and times of rain. This may be there showering upon us, but love still grows, we will not care, we will be there looking at that view that goes on for miles. Sometimes we will have to cope with the rainfall that wants to keep us apart. Sometimes I think that I am going to lose my way to you. While the gray storms end up taking our joyful colors away once more. Upon the clear, we stand together at last… arm in arm, and hand and hand, we are laced, and we embrace one another. The colors of red, blue, and pink are the sky once more. Plus, all along you were there, this time we share. The colors begin setting the mood and light ones more. All the vivid gold sights with the feelings of being united and that will be us as a pair. The many stars shine bright because we are going to be there all night, holding on to what we had that night. I used to bite my lips, thinking about that gold band, and the sparkly rock on top. You can make me feel like royalty; yes, I will be your queen ruler. Maybe someday all this will not be a fantasy and the dreams will come true when we look at a different view, just me and you.