Rain, and my weird brain

Rain, originally uploaded by Tony….

This isn't one of my photos, it's one I found on Flickr and decided to use to illustrate something that's rattling around in my brain.

I was chatting at length with a dear friend this afternoon and one of the topics of conversation was synesthesia. I've mentioned it before here on this blog; it's something that's just always been there for me and I kept it to myself, assuming it wouldn't translate or that it would land me in a psych ward somewhere.

As an adult, I read about it a few years ago and was glad to see that, if I couldn't exactly declare myself "not crazy," I could at least have company in the ward.

Back to the present-day.

Last night, one of my Facebook friends mentioned in an update that she loved the smell of rain. Well, I do, too.

So much, so, that I think I can safely say it's my very favorite smell in the whole world, tightly bound in glad feelings of isolation and of being enveloped in cool warmth. I know, I know -- that didn't make a bit of sense. How could isolation be glad? And how could warmth be cool? I can't explain it. It's just true for me.

Yesterday, at the arts festival in Fort Worth, I visited lots and lots of artists' booths and saw lots of stuff I really liked. But there was one booth, belonging to a metalworker, in which I stood and looked at his work... and smelled rain.

It wasn't raining outside.

It was the FEELING I got from standing in his booth, looking at his work. It just left me speechless with gladness. The precise feeling -- along with the very smell -- that I experience during a spring rainstorm.

No, I couldn't afford any of his work. Heck, there wasn't anything at the entire show we could afford, even the corny-dogs. But I saw that man's work, and it was a swirling time-stop moment in my life.