Today is a grey, drizzly, blustery day. It’s the kind of watery cold that you feel right through you. The kind of day that you like to sit at the window and watch the wind move through the trees, and the rain fall, mixed with snow fill the air of the world with magic. Unlike people who live for warm summer days, I thrive on days like this. There is a palpable power permeating the atmosphere. I can close my eyes and feel it.

It makes me think of the cold stone of castles with tapestries hung on the walls to help with the drafts that seep through the walls, which are really the ghosts and spirits of the land and air, of relatives we think are gone, but on days like this are free to move through the walls reminding us of things we have forgotten. We wrap ourselves in woven fabrics and sit by warm fires.
We are invited by the spirits to open magic tomes to enter into new or forgotten worlds.

As the chilly rain taps on the window, we are with Prospero on the island while Ariel arrears and disappears in thunder and lightning; we change the scene as we, with King Richard II, stand in the rain off the coast of Wales and “with rainy eyes write sorrow on the bosom of the earth. . .” ; we turn our head again and watch with Macbeth through the heavy air as Great Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane hill moves against him. A great gust of wind blows against us and transports us to Dover, where we huddle against the rain and watch as Mad King Lear, in a moment of great clarity says to his faithful daughter, “You must bear with me. Pray you now, forget and forgive; I am old and foolish.”

Every puddle is a magic portal to other worlds.

Or perhaps we stand in stand on a path of crossroads in the wood, facing doors in archways as we listen to
“footfalls echo in the memory
down a passage which we did not take
towards the door we never opened
into the rose garden. . .
Quick. said the bird, find them, find them,
Round the corner. Through the first gate,
Into our first world, shall we follow
The deception of the thrush?”

On days like these, the gods call us to introspection. To read and write and learn and pray. In the silence of our sanctum we raise a hand and speak the words to invoke spirits and open doors to other realms into which we may only peer through as passive observers or fall into as active participants.

The rain softens our heart and brings life, while the wind brings us memory. If we are fortunate, a flash of lightning will fall from the firmament filling the air with electric revelation.

Then, I’ll return to my tea; breathe in the steam, feel the warmth, and in the end, read the leaves.