They say: if he beats you, it means he loves you. And so the rain has been beating against the windowsill for days now, despite the expected Epiphany frosts and the promised cold winter. Who promised it, I no longer remember. What I do remember is the folk sign that if an onion is not wrapped in many layers of skin, the winter will be rather mild, nothing much. Although February still lies ahead — supposedly the last and shortest month, but a highly unpredictable one. What it has in mind is anyone’s guess.
But let us return to our sheep. How many times has one already written about rain, about that languor under a blanket with a book and a cup of tea to its drumming, about romantic spleen: “the lamp is not lit, and the calendars lie…
How many bread-growing, bread-ploughing gazes, full of hope and expectation, have been turned upward into the rainless sky?
And now we have waited long enough. “All night the rain pours down, rain on the glass and into the puddles.” I shall leave the quotation marks on one side only, having replaced “day” with “night”. The point, after all, is not the time of day, but the season. Rain in January is no trivial thing — even, I would say, romantic. It locks pensioners of both sexes indoors, and the city grows younger before one’s eyes! Thanks to the life-giving moisture of the rain, the asphalt shackles that hinder the breathing of the earth dissolve, and numerous heaps of rubbish sprout, open, bloom, and give off their fragrance! If it beats you, it means it loves you. And the city strikes its beloved residents full force as they try somehow to get to the bread — and that is quite a spectacle! — sliding between little posts once considered trees and now, at last!, revealing their true essence to the townspeople who had failed to understand that essence before. Who needs trees? But posts, stripped of their arboreal individuality; posts that have become support in an icy extravaganza; posts, milestones of a new path — those are needed. All trimmed alike; never mind that they are ugly, that is only for now. Later, later they will grow lush, blossom, and fill the air with fragrance!
And yet, the sun has already come out. And many brave optimists will roll along the icy ruts of city courtyards and secondary streets, going about their business. Sun, winter, ice — beauty! The main thing is to know how to see that beauty. To rejoice in it. To be filled with it. And to remember: if it beats you, it means it loves you!
