Days and days of rain ended here, temporarily, today just before sunset. The clouds, some dark grey, others white, parted here and there as shafts of sunlight sliced over the layered sky. As I crested around the edge of Bernal Hill, I saw the first rainbow, rising abruptly from the Bay and arcing halfway to the heavens.
Everything in view was crisp and sharp. Every building and every car, not to mention the shining eyes in every face I passed. The trees, many bare, some with their first pink blossoms of the spring glistened. I saw a bird nest in a large tree next to the street, and a plastic-sheathed newspaper that presumably had missed its mark -- the porch -- outside one Victorian -- and became lodged in a tree.
The Safeway mall was lit surrealistically. The signs of the various shops stood out in their neon-lit clarity like a paint palette. An amazingly intense chunk of rainbow, thick and supple, hung over Safeway like a guardian angel. The shopping carts were wet. People emerged from the shops and cars and held cell phones aloft -- intent on photographing the drama in the sky above us.
It was a magical moment, all of those hand-held devices held up toward heaven, trying to capture a snippet of the unknowable. Alas, it also is indescribable, this kind of natural beauty. It brought tears to my eyes.
***
Being this is a season of relentless rains, my tiny daughter and I spent most of the day inside, doing "art projects." She chatters happily when she's with me, sometimes I don't even have to answer. But then, suddenly, she becomes frustrated with her inability to execute a realistic enough rendition of some object or another, and my radar goes up.
This is a little girl who is extremely hard on herself, and despite her generally sunny moods, she can darken as suddenly as a summer squall overtaking a sailboat out in the Gulf of Mexico. She started tearing up her work, pouting, angry whereas seconds before she had been so seemingly carefree that my mind felt free to continue its normal restless roaming, somewhere far from the present scene.
Later, when the rain lightened to something more like a mist, we went out front to throw a soft football around. Used to be that every time the ball got close to her, rather than catch it, she went into a defensive position, holding her hands up for protection, closing her eyes, trying to avoid contact.
Then she would say, "I'm no good at catching."
This presented me with a parental dilemma. The solution I hit upon was to tell her to hold her hands behind her back. Then, when the ball was coming toward her, she would have to react instinctively to catch it.
This worked. She caught around 30 straight.
Anyway, back to our artistic quandary and how hard she was being on herself. I stumbled upon the idea that she was stuck on the idea that all art has to be representational, sort of an age-appropriate proclivity toward contemporary realism.
I could have pulled out my books on Rauschenberg, Pollack, Johns; or even the Impressionists, and tried to introduce the concepts of abstraction. But, that seemed a little high-octane for an 8-year-old who likes to chat a lot. So, I reminded her that she could concentrate her work on making a Valentine's Day card, since that (bizarre and over-hyped) holiday looms next week.
She thereupon devoted her drawing, writing, coloring and painting efforts to this concept, and we were again back to our previous state of ease. As she happily created what she called a "rainbow" effect on her card, I asked whom she was going to give it to.
She thought for a second, and then replied: "I'm just going to sign it, 'Love, from me.'" Then, maybe I can give it to everyone.
So, here, a bit early, with her blessing, is an early greeting from my tiny companion and me, to you. She and I love romantic movies and we both get sad when we hear of yet another couple that breaks up. (I had to tell her today that that has happened to one of her favorite adult friends.)
Rainbow hearts and rainbow skies over a rainbow city with a mayor in trouble. The day that Barack Obama announced for President. I don't know about you, but I seem to suffer from a kind of congenital optimism.
Maybe this world can heal itself after all. Maybe the greed and the cruelty will give way to a new human ecology that lives softly on the planet, a global Buddhism of happy vegetarians. Or maybe we will tear each other apart like hungry wolves lurking in a forest of monstrous proportions, say the Donald Trump National Preserve.
As for me, I go both ways, back and forth about what I think will happen. From the depths of hopelessness, envisioning nuclear winter and global warming, to the sudden warmth of a girlish hand in mine, or the slash of colors suddenly splashed over our common sky.
I also saw a jet sailing away into the night clouds. Escape.
That sounds like a good idea about now...
-30-
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