Thoughts on Rain
Rain as Inevitability
Every season turns into a longing for this inevitable. A separation from this absolute, as I sit by my window watching the tiny droplets of rain fall slowly over the span of hours, and then fade over time. Yet, there is a paradox in longing for the inevitable, which is solved by the mystery of time. To know that rain will arrive, doesn’t satiate the longing of when it will arrive. The anxiety of missing rain, when I am sleeping or to have it too late, the forgetfulness of longing, when the longing has turned into dejection. To know that rain is inevitable, but to feel the season too long must be a human condition.
Rain as Memory
Longing is a memory of the future built on the past. I am longing for the next time it rains, as I watch the little droplets fade. The last remnants of a moment, slowly dripping down in an attempt to lengthen the memory, to give grace to the poet for capturing this memory in verse. The wet ground and the petrichor overburdening the senses, is a proof of the past. Sometimes the remnants of the memory are needed, to believe that the past really happened, that reality is not a farce. Memory, the flawed testament to the past, is holding nostalgia and longing together. When it rains, I am longing for nostalgia. When it rains, you are nostalgic for a longing. We are torn in time that knows nothing but the present. That knows nothing, but that it rains.
Rain as Exposition
A cycle is hidden within the fabric of nature, which nature carries as an inherent thought. A thought which is so difficult to translate, that every season is just an attempt at utterance. The inherent lyricism of rain is hidden to the conceptual viewer. It is a single concept that flows into everything, that can just be felt. In the absence of shared symbols, the poet watches the raindrops and finds sublimity. The expression of the inherent thought is contained as much in who watches the rain, as the rain itself. Maybe, after all, I am a part of nature’s plan too. I think I often tend to forget that.
Rain as Fear
I have always liked to look at rain from a distance. The attempt is to not give in completely, to not drench myself in its existence. The essence overburdens. I have built a myth in my head, where the tragic hero prolongs longing for his love, in order to not love. A purist of the order that is so indulged in the essence of things, that he never experiences life. Life must feel so long, for we prolong the inevitable. It is the recurrent chances offered to us, to stretch out a hand in the rain, than to contain it in language. I wonder how many people long for rains, and then watch it fade. There must be a pleasure in living with the fear of the known.
Rain as Death
When the rain departs, and the skies clear out, I step out. The memory of it sticking to my feet, as my head tries to find a remnant lingering in the skies. Death is an event of regrets. Regrets that cover the skies in their own colour before the impending rain arrives—a dark premonition for the ones in dissonance about life. The urge to stay in the moment, and to run away into one’s safe voyeuristic gaze, as life passes by, stuck in this storm before and after the rain. The calmness of death, as the skies clear out and the birds begin to chirp again and all you’re left with is a regret that sticks like a memory, which one tries to wash off in little corners of one’s isolation.
Emil Cioran and the Philosophy of Nothingness
“The fact that life has no meaning is a reason to live --moreover, the only one.”
-Emil Cioran
Last week, I picked up Emil Cioran’s book, “On the Heights of Despair,” and I finally started reading this existentialist that half the people I know despise, and the other half find solace in. None of them truly agree with him, but having read him, I do not think his attempt is to make you agree to anything, since agreement in itself means ending the absurdity of existence and attaching a meaning to life. His attempt rather seems, is to explore the utter nothingness and meaninglessness of human existence. Before we move forward, talking about his work, we need to understand the context of his work. Being an existentialist, he is not attempting to give an over arching solution to the world’s problems, or dealing in the logical structures of epistemology or metaphysics. In fact, to call him a philosopher, considering his hate for philosophy is absurd in itself. I, rather see him, as a poet of despair. If you have ever met a person who celebrates life, who finds beauty in little things, in the rustling of the leaves, the skies and has hope that soon we will find better answers to the modern problems we have, Cioran is the antithesis to that person, yet shares a certain love for life, in a way of negation.
Cioran rejects all forms of systems or attempts to find meaning, since for him the world is absurd. The very attempt to sit and philosophise about things is bound to end in failure, since the world in itself is a failed project in its composition. In fact, he seems to have a love for failure and being useless. From a cosmic level to an individual level, he asks us to embrace the absurd, he asks us to answer what meaning life has and if it has nothing then why are we indulging in delusions that do nothing but expose us to the suffering of this grand absurdity. He writes, “I don't understand why we must do things in this world, why we must have friends and aspirations, hopes and dreams. Wouldn't it be better to retreat to a faraway corner of the world, where all its noise and complications would be heard no more? Then we could renounce culture and ambitions; we would lose everything and gain nothing; for what is there to be gained from this world?”
At this point, when I talk to people about Cioran, they tend to get uncomfortable. They wonder that yes, I agree that there are moments in life when one feels this way but there are beautiful things in life too, and one creates their own meaning. I believe that Cioran, the grand pessimist, might just partially agree with them. He is trapped in his own self awareness, and he doesn’t celebrate that too. In fact, he doesn’t celebrate anything since to celebrate or propound a theory is to philosophise and to tell people that there is a certain way to live life when there is none. Like a lot of great artists, he is filled with life, and his awareness about this multitude of feelings that are contained within him makes him realise the inherent emptiness of everything. He writes, in one of my favourite quotes, “I feel I must burst because of all that life offers me and because of the prospect of death. I feel that I am dying of solitude, of love, of despair, of hatred, of all that this world offers me. With every experience I expand like a balloon blown up beyond its capacity. The most terrifying intensification bursts into nothingness. You grow inside, you dilate madly until there are no boundaries left, you reach the edge of light, where light is stolen by night, and from that plenitude as in a savage whirlwind you are thrown straight into nothingness.”
What I seem to take from Cioran is his love for lyricism and the enthusiasm for life. He repeatedly disparages all forms of intellectual pursuits, or attempts to find meaning in life. He rather asks to interiorize to the uncomfortable parts of existence, to burst and find nothingness, and to embrace that absurdity and accept the uncomfortable parts of life. Although he doesn’t stop at acceptance too, since acceptance is made into an ideology of itself. He takes solace in failure, in despair, in loneliness, in all the basic emotions that we try to hide from and run away from. He asks us, that beneath all the layers of meaning that we have built, what is truly there? He writes, “How I would love one day to see all people, young and old, sad or happy, men and women, married or not, serious or superficial leave their homes and their work places, relinquish their duties and responsibilities, gather in the streets and refuse to do anything anymore.” For all the practical contradictions, it seems such a beautiful imagery, one of pure anarchy being celebrated where individuality shines forth and every individual celebrates the élan of life.
Cioran is not an absolute way to live life, for he rejects that position altogether. He contradicts himself countless times too, since he has already forsaken his position of being taken seriously. He is a poet of despair, who makes you feel less alone, who can externalise the lyricism and beauty within the darkest parts of human life. In one of his famous phrases, he says, “After having struggled madly to solve all problems, after having suffered on the heights of despair, in the supreme hour of revelation, you will find that the only answer, the only reality, is silence.” After reading him, I know that I will find solace with him in that silence.
The End