Light in the Rain

In the early 2000s as young man in my first semester of my bachelors I was attending a community college while living by myself in a small efficiency apartment on the south side of Austin Texas. One night in late October or early November was taking a night class at an old high school which was probably built in the seventies or earlier. It had that old school feeling that anyone born before 1990 likely remembers, and indefinable quality pasted in the manilla colored walls. Not exactly musty, but a little bland with a strange energy moving through it, maybe the energy of people who had once roamed the hallways with thousands of things on each one of their minds. One night after class let out out I had a conversation with a classmate about the course assignment and then we started into small talk until it became later. After saying goodbye and parting ways, now almost 10pm, just about everyone had left except for the night staff. I walked through the old hallways and out the door feeling an eerie emptiness of the building.

Moving through the double doors I entered the sidewalk hearing the door click behind me and a low rolling thunder moving hauntingly in the sky somewhere in the distance. Because of the difficult parking situation at the time I had parked my car far down another street, and at first it was only lightly sprinkling so I decided to walk it. It was about to rain, I could tell, but I thought I could get to my car before the downpour. But sure enough, after getting some distance from the building it started to rain down with a sudden crack of lightning. I was far enough from my car that if I ran towards it I would be soaked and my books would get wet. It just so happened that there was a small wooden shack nestled in trees and brush nearby that I often passed walking to the school. To avoid this torrent of rain I ran under the shack and took shelter here. I stood there alone in this small little shack as the rain dropped outside. Thankfully this was 2003, years before smartphones (back then I didn’t even have a flip phone), so I didn’t automatically check Facebook or my text messages as people would today. I say thankfully because such an instinctual action common today would have caused me to miss out on a vivid moment. Instead, I stood there alone in that long mysterious night taking shelter as the water pattered on the ceiling above, not knowing who or what may be around me or how long I would be there. There was even something slightly scary about this old shack at night. It was small enough to tell for certain that I was alone in it, but dark enough to spark instinctual feelings of caution inside of me, as if claws might reach out from the dirt to grab me. To be honest, I found it kind of fun at eighteen being caught in a rainstorm living on my own.

There was no door just an open area so I stood near the entrance. I looked around as the rain fell, concrete buildings in the distance, a stairwell, dark bushes and a chain length fence over a sharp hill drop. It was a place I had never been before, a situation I had not seen. Over time my mind started to enjoy standing there and looking at the rainy scene before me. I was a small town boy, and here I was stuck in my first rainstorm in the city. You may laugh, but to me at the time it meant something, and I was having fun.

At some point I began to be fixated on something very small and innocuous, yet enchanting. A small distance from where I stood was a simple street light shining a golden halogen light into the pavement, and center of the light draped across a small puddle on the ground. Here before me was dancing gold, a hidden treasure nestled in everyday life. There was something about it that captivated me, I almost didn’t want the rain to stop. Sometimes exotic and eternal in this old rainy gold. In this representation was my mind’s heart was opened to a feeling carried down through the ages. There I was, present in life, with hidden treasure discovered before me. It was beautiful, and I believe something in that moment changed me, if only in a small way, forever.