The Rainmaker

He was a sorcerer of numbers. He was a magician, an alchemist, a weaver of stories. He was saint and a charlatan and a man and a myth. He captured dreams through the lens of his camera and quoted facts and figures from his occasionally encyclopedic mind. He was my teacher and my student, describing faraway lands where the sisters of my sisters remain, and learning the places of my geography that remain uncharted. He was the ancient archetype and yet flesh and blood in front of me. He was all of these things, and of course more- there were shades and shimmers of him that changed with the sunlight, and the star shine. Amongst all his talents, all his colors, there is one thing that will remain, the thing I will remember him by. The man was a rainmaker.

He was supposed to come and go, just passing through. But he came and he saw and he stayed. And he brought the rain.

Although we existed in a place where the walls and surroundings looked real and solid and familiar enough, through the mists of the rains he brought they changed temporarily into something filled with a more dreamlike quality. My days and nights went from a routine I am altogether too familiar with and often bored by to become a new adventure every day. He remained concrete and yet vaporous throughout. He was there, he was not. He kept some of the tricks of his trade behind the curtain, for others he brought me center stage and made me his lovely assistant. He could disappear behind smoke and mirrors, and reappear right beside me. There were no white rabbits, no fancy top hats, and yet he brought that rain out of a clear and cloudless sky.

I looked at him sometimes and wondered “what if” without words. I never bothered to utter my musings out loud. I knew this was a monsoon that could not be recreated in any other setting; it only worked under these particular African skies, on these particular coordinates. When we talked, (we talked, we talked) and we sometimes mentioned other lands we had known, other seasons, never comparing them to this, but relating the particulars of geography that had proven elusive, difficult to navigate, or ultimately inhospitable. The changes in climate and peoples that defined a place We wondered, out loud, to our selves, whether we would each find a country and a land to call home, a people and place to satisfy our similar yet different cases of wanderlust.

He was able to create the mirage of what a life would look like, and I let myself be lead into that dream world for a bit. Through the mists of these pouring rains I could see it, and found myself looking at him and painting the picture myself. Occasionally I came up for air, taking a breath of reality to remind me where I was, and where I planned to remain. I saw parts of my village through his eyes, and I could see that some of my village saw him through my eyes as well.

I wondered briefly when he gazed at me what he saw. I wondered if he was able to see me through the mirrors and prisms, to find me amongst the shattered pieces of self and past and future lying in the confusion around me, the pieces that comprise my life through this looking glass. I wonder if when he looked at me he saw the figure of the person I’m wrestling with, or the one crawling out from the confines of my old skins and searching for the comforting encasement of my new ones. The person I’ve been, the one I’m becoming, and the somewhat messy space in between. Or if he saw through all of those layers to the core of me, the essence that embraces my bones, encases my heart, envelopes my brain and encircles my soul. Maybe he saw a glimmer of this person. Likely not. I may never know. And in the end it might not matter.

Because the man is a rainmaker. He came to bring the relief of a downpour, to summon the waters that will relieve the drought. He is not the gardener, the one who will catalogue the species and tend to the flowers. He is not the one who creates the potions that feed the roses and drive out the pests. He is not the one who will discover and map the landscape, he will not help build the fences and traverse the garden path. I have known some of those and the position is just not open right now. That man who will fill it will come later, when a few more things are completed.

This man was a rainmaker, and he served his purpose faithfully. He gracefully performed the dances that brought the rains. With the rains came all the things the land needs to survive, to produce, and to provide for her people. He summoned the pouring rains, the drenching waters that washed away the old and the dead, the rains that brought the refreshing calm. He reminded me that the rains will come again.

Like all rainmakers, he had to move on. Although sometimes I wished he could stay and make the rains for another season I know for now I’ve got enough water. When there is too much rain, it can bring a flood; the waters find a path on which to travel the lands until the landscape itself is ultimately changed. I’m not ready to succumb to the temperaments of this particular weather systems demands, or any others for that matter.

The man brought the rain. And I will always be grateful.