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The dark season has arrived. Where I live it rains—a lot. In fact, our fall and winters are just months and months of rain. The air changes, the earth exudes moisture, and suddenly we wake up to a spectrum of grey instead of the summer sun. Many people suffer depression in this period. We become insular, withdrawing all warmth to our cores. Even the architecture seems to change as activity moves inside—behind closed blinds and sealed windows. Patios are abandoned and porches left dark. But I have learned to love the rain. It provides a mask for those risks I took in the light, a veil that covers the stumbles of summer footfalls. Its floods quench my parched body and surges new hope in my hot, beating heart. The summer’s heat brought passion, but the damp chill of this season ushers in honesty; it is Byron’s dark lady walking in the night with “all that’s best of dark and bright”1 meeting here the sooty remains of doused flames. It is a raw beauty. This should be the true season of romance. We are exposed in our humanity, we sniffle and scurry, we lose our stilettos and tans, and we are simplified. The romance of rain comes in drizzles, we shelter one another, feel the dampness together, and form community under the eaves. It is a romance of modesty.
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