Rain - we're in it now!

The local weather reporters spent the last three days warning us about this week's storms, in that heightened sense of hysteria that Los Angeles exhibits whenever it's supposed to rain.

The first raindrops started to fall yesterday, but it was a slow and steady drip. Today is a different story. This is a gullywasher. Sudden gusts of wind rush up the canyon and the leaves of the jacaranda move like a woman tossing her hair. It's as if someone threw a bucket of water at the windows and on the flat roof of our house. The gutters fill and overflow.

Our house, porous as it is with jalousie windows and chimney flue, breathes as the wind does, changing the pressure so that doors pull shut, and cold current runs along the floor. It smells like charcoal from the fireplace, wet dog, wet leaves.


The southwest corner of our house reminds me of a boat the way our floor-to-ceiling windows ringed by a narrow deck, jut out over the falling away hillside below. Today as the rain swirls around us it reminds me of an ark, as if we're riding wave-tossed on storming seas.