It is a fine, drizzly Portland day in New York City. Having spent some four years of my life at Reed College, I remember these days with a certain fondness… There is, after all, a comfort in this kind of rain, in this soft, gray blanket thrown over the world. Shelter, often taken for granted, inspires sudden gratitude. Warm and dry, one feels especially warm and dry. Best of all, one does not feel guilty lounging on the couch all hung over and cozy and doing a whole lot of nothing, which is what I've been doing today. Yes, a fine Portland rain goes well with a Sunday hangover. The way the day feels — soft, hazy, sleepy — is the way you feel. You are in tune with nature, and it is a fine feeling.
Of course, I've been back in New York since I graduated from Reed College, some 11 years now, and here in the big city these rainy Portland days are few and far between, which is most likely why I remember them with such fondness and nostalgia, and am so appreciative of the rain today. But I have not forgotten that when you live in Oregon, that wet-dog winter drizzle can get to you. If there were shamans who could sing the sun into existence, and dance the clouds away, surely they would gravitate to the Northwest. With this in mind, the following…
Sun-making is best practiced in Portland, OR, where it rains a lot. There's no real point, however, in attempting it on a truly dismal winter day, when the clouds are uniform and endless, heavy as the sea, and the rain is a constant and a given. Even the strongest sun-maker will fail in weather like this....
Better to try a spring day in Portland, one that starts with a fine rain, soft and delicate, gracing your cheeks. The clouds above should be lighter, and behind them, there should be the sense of the sun. Yes, to be a sun-maker, you must be able to sense the sun — where it is, and what it wants to do (it wants to burn through the clouds and shine down on all that wet green land). In this way, a sun-maker's job is simply one of encouragement. You are reminding the sun of your appreciation, coaxing it out with flattery.
Sun-making is also a matter of faith. There can be no second-guessing, no doubt; your mind must be open, yet focused, as clear and bright as a desert sky. Looking up at the white-washed heavens, blinking up into the soft rain, you must feel the sun on your face — not just imagine it, but actually feel it — the warm, golden glow of it sinking into you, expanding, washing you away. And if you are truly mindless (but for that certain sense of the sun), it will happen. The rain won't lift, not yet, but the sun begins to shine through — ah, those beautiful sunny rains of Portland — a sudden fairy-tale land of jeweled leaves and grass and air, everywhere droplets light-struck and a-sparkle, rainbows gracing rooftops and old sad trees. And it is a miracle you have performed (though you must feel no pride, or the clouds will condense again: sun-making is necessarily an egoless profession), you have conjured out the sun in one of the rainiest places on earth, and up in the sky you can see it, hot, yellow, happy, burning through a haze of white clouds and shining down on the wet city, and suddenly everyone in Portland is a sun-maker, looking up and smiling and feeling the warmth of it on their faces, their sense of the sun final and certain. The rain has stopped, and with all these sun-makers there's no chance it will return, not for a while, at least. It is a sunny day in Portland, and all because of you....