On walking in the cold rain

Walking in the cold rain today between tasks gave me the opportunity to cool off, collect my thoughts, ponder the week that was just ending. December is a strange time, filled with change, the end of a semester, people leaving, some dying, others moving on, still others are new on the scene. Perhaps no other month is filled the transitions that December brings, and today’s cold rain gave me pause to think about those who had just left and those who are just arriving. The cold rain fell on both the just and the unjust alike today, and on the just plain tired as well. The students scurried to their exams, some going to their final final exams, graduating in just over a week–they too are in transition in the cold and rain. The cold and rain are cloaked in nostalgia, the same now as thirty years ago, or maybe even fifty years ago as I head into class, kindergarten, wearing a corduroy coat and a hat, mittens. The cold and rain span a half century of memories that seemed to have passed in the blink of an eye. The cold and rain are the same now as they were then, comforting in the sense that although I have changed, the rain has not. The cold keeps the mind sharp, the senses wide open, the heart warm, and the nose cold. The passage of time is illusory, and although the calendar tells me that time is passing, I know that time and calendars are only arbitrary and illusory social constructions without meaning. Only the cold rain is real.