5th February 2021

The inherent dangers of oxygenation are but a few more rainy days away and even the lavish use of Vaseline is unlikely to keep the red peril from affixing to my exterior or, and far more alarmingly, to interior moving parts. Of course I obviously jest, for the being corporal is not actually able to rust, or is it?

Physical transmutation, without the extremes of interference that only extraordinary circumstance provides, is nigh on impossible. However, the mind, the psyche, the emotional underpinning, is quite capable of adverse reaction to climatic stimuli. I well remember a wet week spent under canvas in a rain infested Carmarthen when I was but a lad of ten or eleven. Life quite quickly devolved to the repetitious sound of drumming above mine head, morning, noon, and night, not unreminiscent, in my pubescent imagination at least, to the ancient Chinese water torture.

The flora, fauna and general environs of beloved Orcas is of course much dependent upon precipitation, being at core a green and luscious place. Indeed, that exact aspect is perhaps the quality most indelibly printed upon the visual recollections of locals and transients alike. The problem is of course contextualization. Yes, gentle rain is necessary, the occasional shower even picturesque in normal times, but having been isolated indoors seemingly for months on end, separated from almost all contact except that with nature, any new lengthy fixed fettering becomes a plague in itself.

Personally, I adore the rain, enjoy its variances, its effects, the feel, sound, and touch of droplets caressing, invading, soaking my skin and clothing, but even I am becoming unenamoured with such an abundance of precious delight. Forty days and forty nights of downpour was the cause of Noah’s great flood, but I doubt if even in these extravagantly unusual times such an phenomena threatens to reoccur. Yet I huddle, shelter, hide, withdraw, protecting myself from another straw descending upon my back, fearing perhaps it may prove to be the last one before the final snap asunder.