relief.

last week, while i was stuck in my room with its one window that faces a wall and a tree, talking to my boyfriend, i didn't notice the clouds moving and stirring, until finally they burst into rain.

and the result flooded me with memories of home, catapulted me back in time, through all the 21 years of fall and winter rain that came before this. and even though it was cold as i stood on the deck, a blanket wrapped around my neck like a scarf, i felt warm and joyous, like a child experiencing rain for the first time. indeed, it was my first storm since i've been here, since June.

it's funny that the movies always portray rain so gloomily, when i think human beings and all animals understand it instinctively as a form of relief. or maybe it's b/c the movies take on a very Eastern/Mid-Western perspective, where rain is much more common and not appreciated in the way i do now. here in LA, the long months of sun and heat, drought and dust, were making me forget the pleasure of variance and surprise in the weather. the dust and monotony were washed away, and i could remember what it felt like to know the summer had ended, and i'd be coming home soon.


my first LA rain from stephan!e lee on Vimeo.

one thing i wish i could have captured: the smell of rain. i'm sure there's some scientific way to explain it (electron charges, changing air pressure) but i'm going to say it's the smell of comfort, of connectedness – rain splashing everything, knowing that even though i'm a whole stretch of America away from my friends and family, this is the same way they'd be experiencing a storm at home, that though i'm grown up and far from home and working my first job and living on my own for the first time in my life, i can feel like a kid again, at the drop of a splash of rain.

-stephan!e