Rain, and More Black Dogs
[Drought and Showers | The Rain Bringer | Georgia Heat | Black Dog Photo Shoot | Updates to Follow]
It almost seems Georgia — indeed, the entire South — has been in a drought for as long as I can remember. In the semester before I left for Europe, we would go a whole month with only a couple of days of rain, and the showers weren’t all that impressive even then. I have memories in my childhood of rolling thunder, lightning that seemed to tear the world into scraps and paste it back together again in the same moment. But those storms have all but dried up here.
Ireland and England were eye-openers. It doesn’t storm there; in seven months, I didn’t see a single bolt of lightning, didn’t hear even the most distant peal of thunder rolling over the Wicklow Mountains. When the rain fell, it would come steady and long, sometimes more than once a day. If you’ve ever wondered why all the postcards feature rolling hills and fields, green into eternity, look to the sky.
And yet, since coming home to a Georgia summer so hot it makes you sweat just to go get the mail, I haven’t been able to escape the rain. I drove across town with my sister to get groceries on Tuesday night, and we had to go through a thunderstorm so apocalyptic I thought we might not make it home. The rain played jungle drums on the hood of the car as we waited at stoplights, and with each blast of thunder, the radio signal would fizzle, as though in startled retreat. We had a milder shower last night.
It wasn’t until I look out the window at 2:30 this afternoon to find a hard rain falling that I began to question the weather. My family, especially my grandparents — farmers whose garden, thanks to the recent showers, has given up a bounty of tomatoes as red and slick-swollen as human hearts — are convinced that I brought the storms with me. My friends in Dublin tell me I left the sun behind. Those two things would be quite a feat even for a being empowered to direct the weather, so I’m not sure I can lay claim to having done any of this myself. But I will say it’s been wonderful to sit in my bedroom and listen to the thunder growling in the sky, and watch the thirsty earth drinking itself blind out in the backyard.
These are fickle showers, and sometimes they’ll slacken as soon as they start, leaving behind moments of quiet wonder: the hesitant peeping of crickets becomes audible, and the air heats up and swells until it’s something you have to face when you walk out the door, something you have to knock ahead of you and push aside as you bend to get the paper, like a balloon without enough helium to rise above eye level. It’s a strange thing to come back to a country where the air has struck a tenuous compromise between liquid and gas.
I spent the day uploading all the Black Dog pictures I collected on the road. I have articles and books from various people I met, and many of them have artists’ renderings of what a Black Dog might look like — a slim volume about Black Dogs in Latin American tradition was particularly helpful. I took the afternoon to rediscover the joys of using Photoshop, which makes any kind of photo work a breeze. I was able to scan in the photos and bring them up to a high enough standard and resolution to work in the documentary in a matter of hours. I still have a few more to go for tomorrow, and the rest of the time will be spent logging the few straggling hours of footage I have left. I can’t wait to sink my teeth into the real start of the project, but this preliminary work is very important, and it will make navigating the mountain of data I’ve gotten this summer a lot easier.
I’d love to put some of the pictures up, but as I’m sure most of the images are copyrighted, it would probably best to stick to text. But there will be plenty of that. Updates will keep rolling in as I make more headway on the project. More to come.
