Sweet Summer Rain

"Don't you just love these long rainy afternoons in New Orleans? An hour isn't just an hour-but a little peice of eternity dropped into the palm of your hand-and who knows what to do with it?"
-Blanche DuBois
A Streetcar Named Desire

I got caught in the rain yesterday on my way to work. Not just a gentle drizzle, but the type of downpour where an umbrella is useless for the rain comes in from all sides. I was soaked to the bone as I arrived at GW Fins for my shift. Regardless of that fact, I am not one to complain about the rain. I am hard pressed to think of a more beautiful city in the rain than New Orleans. The already romantically gothic atmosphere seems magnified when the water cascades from the cast iron balconies, like tears falling from Spanish lace. The dark clouds seem so low and close that if you reached high enough you could penetrate them with a fist.

Although I prefer to be at home or in a neighborhood tavern when such a deluge begins, the beauty of such an event is so striking that the inconvenience of being wet is nothing. It makes me feel alive as I watch tourists huddled close to walls in their $2.00 ponchos emblazoned with "French Quarter" insignias all over the place. These ponchos are nothing more than garbage bags with arm holes in them. A one-time use garment that will inevitably end up in a bin liner that they so closely resemble.