For most of my adult life, I've had a rain song: some particular song that begins playing in my head, in almost clockwork fashion, when those torrents come. Sometimes it's been the same song for years at a stretch. When I lived in Tucson -- yes, across that whole span of years -- the song was "Outside the rain begins, and it may never end..." (Kind of an odd image, I know, for Tucson -- with its sudden downpours and its months of drought.)When I moved to Seattle the song abruptly switched: "The fog meets the beaches, and out on the reach, it is rain-ning." Later it became "Come in from the rain." And for a period of time, following a drought, the lyrics were my own odd creation: "Rain on Seattle, the way it should be..."
Our minds are so different, aren't they, in ways that aren't at all apparent from the outside? There's a reason why I so often quote song lyrics: I scarcely have a thought, or a feeling, that doesn't trigger a lyric. Ah , and it doesn't necessarily even take a true emotion or true thought; a simple two-word phrase may have some stock lyric attached to it. Perhaps eventuallyI'll be able to explain the neurobiology of it. Today I'll just describe: The word "Thank you," -- flashed across a computer screen, after I've filled out some form or other -- well, that triggers "Thank you for the kindness and your stories of the road..." And that "home" button on each page of my blog (under the bottom post and above the eduFire button and the quotes)? "How much I wanted you home."
