Of Adolescence & Adulthood June 2004 Click to view Table of Contents Click to view photo gallery Click to view cover story

Creative Non-Fiction

A Complicated Affair  By anna filippova

Photograph by tracey hoyng

Call me crazy, but I love running in the rain. Granted, there is fine line between love and the common cold, particularly during the monsoon season in South East Asia, but the sheer power and gentleness of rain combined with a sometimes playful, and often, passionate wind leave many romantics like me hopelessly in love.

Take, for example, my sleepy neighborhood resting a half hour drive from the heart of town. Every Friday, in the early evening, we are showered with love of various degrees. As soon as the pasar malam (literally translated from the Malay as 'night market') stalls are set up and the food laid out, it starts to drizzle. By this time I have to rush to change buses, and naturally, in the flurried process of doing so, get all my things perspiring. Quickly I duck into a pathetic yellow creature on four wheels that has been missing a door for longer than I can walk. When the aforesaid dwarf pulls up in front of my modest flowering condo, the warm, fuzzy feeling in my heart swells into a downpour of emotions as I run the 200 meters to shelter. Many a day I have been tempted to steal one of those huge umbrellas that hopelessly attempt to cover the pasar malam food stalls, but this idea, like many of such a whimsical nature, has disadvantages, the most obvious being the likelihood of my falling flat on my face during the all-important get away. Most days, I choose to run, and run hard.

Saturdays are deep and passionate. Soon after my family leaves for their bi-weekly trip to the local shopping complex, the wind begins to howl and the living room clock beats ecstatically on its cotton string. I slowly make my way to the balcony, collect the laundry hung out to dry from the night before, and hang it in the kitchen. In some drunkard's attempt to create a series of apartment buildings, all the kitchens have ended up facing the corridor and doors of other tenants. Thus, hanging the clothes in the kitchen seems appropriate, for they are aired through the vent created by hundreds of kitchens piled one on top of the other. I then race around the whole apartment banging windows shut to protect the furniture and electrical equipment, which, by a stroke of genius, are invariably located such that all the passion and love torrential rain brings lands squarely upon them. Once my task is complete, I stand by the closed balcony, looking out bravely onto nature’s fury and listening to its melancholy song rushing through the tiny gaps.

Photograph by Tracey

hoyng

When all is over and life unwinds its present course, I will open my balcony doors and shyly step outside. I will see people picking up fallen flowerpots, worriedly running to their fugitive laundry. But all I always care about is the thirst-quenching air hitting my face, traveling down my neck and gently caressing my ankles ­ the sign of a battle won by both sides.

You may quite rightly ask why I never bring an umbrella with me on Fridays, and always hang laundry out to dry the following day. You see, the rain and I have a complicated affair. Though I insist on avoiding its every advance, I cannot stop myself from admiring the power and tenderness of its torrential downpour; its weaving song, a chilling and refreshing tune, is nature's loveliest music. It is the thought that it all happens just for me that keeps me soaked in love.