My Photo
Name:
Location: Austin, TX, United States

Scholar, Writer, Mother, Dreamer. Editor of Luminarium, an online library for English Literature of the Middle Ages and Renaissance.

Monday, June 26, 2006

It Rained and it Rained and it Rained.

Noah's ArkThe fourth day straight — rain.  Not delightful drip-drip-summer-rain, but full-on cold, blasting, gloomy, I-shall-pour-my-vengeance-on-the-world kind of rain.  I'm gonna have to start looking for an Ark soon.

I tell you, rain depresses me.  I don't know if it's the Leo in me or what, but I'm really susceptible to no-sunlight days.  So trying to hold off the grumps and the woe-is-me's which are lurking in the corners waiting to pounce. *sigh*

And I just thought of the perfect thing to cheer the day.


A. A. Milne.
 

Winnie the Pooh, Chapter 9


...IN WHICH PIGLET IS ENTIRELY SURROUNDED BY WATER


IT rained and it rained and it rained. Piglet told himself that never in all his life, and he was goodness knows how old—three, was it, or four?—never had he seen so much rain. Days and days and days.
Piglet and rain

"If only," he thought, as he looked out of the window, "I had been in Pooh's house, or Christopher Robin's house, or Rabbit's house when it began to rain, then I should have had Company all this time, instead of being here all alone, with nothing to do except wonder when it will stop." And he imagined himself with Pooh, saying, "Did you ever see such rain, Pooh?" and Pooh saying, "Isn't it awful, Piglet?" and Piglet saying, "I wonder how it is over Christopher Robin's way," and Pooh saying, "I should think poor old Rabbit is about flooded out by this time." It would have been jolly to talk like this, and really, it wasn't much good having anything exciting like floods, if you couldn't share them with somebody.

For it was rather exciting. The little dry ditches in which Piglet had nosed about so often had become streams, the little streams across which he had splashed were rivers, and the river, between whose steep banks they had played so happily, had sprawled out of its own bed and was taking up so much room everywhere, that Piglet was beginning to wonder whether it would be coming into his bed soon.

"It's a little Anxious," he said to himself, "to be a Very Small Animal Entirely Surrounded by Water. Christopher Robin and Pooh could escape by Climbing Trees, and Kanga could escape by Jumping, and Rabbit could escape by Burrowing, and Owl could escape by Flying, and Eeyore could escape by—by Making a Loud Noise Until Rescued, and here am I, surrounded by water and I can't do anything."

It went on raining, and every day the water got a little higher, until now it was nearly up to Piglet's window . . . and still he hadn't done anything.

"There's Pooh," he thought to himself. "Pooh hasn't much Brain, but he never comes to any harm. He does silly things and they turn out right. There's Owl. Owl hasn't exactly got Brain, but he Knows Things. He would know the Right Thing to Do when Surrounded by Water. There's Rabbit. He hasn't Learnt in Books, but he can always Think of a Clever Plan. There's Kanga. She isn't Clever, Kanga isn't, but she would be so anxious about Roo that she would do a Good Thing to Do without thinking about it. And then there's Eeyore And Eeyore is so miserable anyhow that he wouldn't mind about this. But I wonder what Christopher Robin would do?"

Then suddenly he remembered a story which Christopher Robin had told him about a man on a desert island who had written something in a bottle and thrown it in the sea; and Piglet thought that if he wrote something in a bottle and threw it in the water, perhaps somebody would come and rescue him!

He left the window and began to search his house, all of it that wasn't under water, and at last he found a pencil and a small piece of dry paper, and a bottle with a cork to it. And he wrote on one side of the paper:Piglet and bottle

HELP!
PIGLIT (ME)

and on the other side:

IT'S ME PIGLIT, HELP HELP!

Then he put the paper in the bottle, and he corked the bottle up as tightly as he could, and he leant out of his window as far as he could lean without falling in, and he threw the bottle as far as he could throw—splash!—and in a little while it bobbed up again on the water; and he watched it floating slowly away in the distance, until his eyes ached with looking, and sometimes he thought it was the bottle, and sometimes he thought it was just a ripple on the water which he was following, and then suddenly he knew that he would never see it again and that he had done all that he could do to save himself.

"So now," he thought, "somebody else will have to do something, and I hope they will do it soon, because if they don't I shall have to swim, which I can't, so I hope they do it soon." And then he gave a very long sigh and said, "I wish Pooh were here. It's so much more friendly with two."
 

5 Comments:

Blogger Mophia said...

"it wasn't much good having anything exciting like floods, if you couldn't share them with somebody"

The best line.

Sorry to hear about all the rain. If you need an ark, try Noah's Ark.
http://www.noahsarkwaterpark.com/

June 26, 2006 10:01 PM  
Blogger Bart Treuren said...

so beautiful this, anniina and so close to the things i treasured in my youth... thank you, i needed just this little bit of silliness and worth to refloat myself ;-)...

keep well...

June 27, 2006 4:34 PM  
Blogger Mark A. said...

It's frustrating that you're getting an abundance of rain while we're experiencing one of the worst droughts in decades. The weather just hates our freedoms.

June 28, 2006 3:12 AM  
Blogger new mexican bird said...

This comment has been removed by the author.

November 10, 2017 8:47 AM  
Blogger new mexican bird said...

I agree with Mark . The weather , when personified , seems to hate human freedoms . Now it's Harvey , Irma and Maria who want to have a 2017 turn at being an imposition on it . . .
Piglet's grandfather's house stood up to the bad weather very nicely in this story . And Piglet returned to being his usual free spirited self when the storm ended .

November 13, 2017 7:19 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home