holding pattern

Bendigo is in a holding pattern, going round in wet circles, wondering if the rain will ever stop.

I shouldn’t call our weather extreme when in the northern half of the continent people drowned in ‘an inland tsunami’. But I can’t recall a ‘rain event’ like this, with humidity over 90 per cent for six days and unrelenting rain. The JRT belts out for a quick piss and comes in soaked. Bendigo Creek has been in torrent for days, not just for a few hours after a downpour.

The rain doesn’t come inside but the humidity does. The front door, swollen with damp, won’t shut. Clothes washed days ago hang damply on the drying rack. And they stink. The red shorts that swoosh when I walk—the material is so stiff—hang limply off my hips.

No breath of wind for five days relieves the clamminess. Random objects stick to each other. The handle of my cane basket sticks to my fingers when I pick it up to go shopping. As I come out of the air-conditioned supermarket, my glasses fog like they did during the build-up in Darwin.

On any day in this town bikes line café footpaths; they whiz past in bunches, riders chattering like monkeys; singly, in pairs and in big groups, they dominate the early morning roads. Cyclists are crazy bastards, but not crazy enough to be out in this.

The streets are empty. The Red Rocket sits in the hall of my house, biding its time. I walk to work and to the gym. Last night Katie is our Cycle class leader, driving us up steep hills to the summits of our heart rates. I max it at 167 for the session.

Thirty minutes seems barely enough, but it’s a relief to climb off the bike and stretch the legs. A 45-minute session is a lifetime. The intensity of these sessions is all well and good but can’t convince me that I shouldn’t be on the road racking up real kilometres.

The bureau says it’ll stop raining, eventually.

This morning I walk to the gym for Pump, umbrella up and eyes down so I don't submerge myself in something deep. Every concavity, gutter, indentation, or hollow is full.

I pump like my life depends on it and when I step out of the gym an hour later the world has changed. Water still lies everywhere, but suddenly the pewter sky you could bang your head on if you stood on tip-toes has lifted. No sun or blue, but someone has turned on the lights.   

The dark brooding clouds have lifted; the rain has stopped. There will be more, but like a woman weeping after the death of a child, the tears cannot last forever. At some point there can be no tears left to cry, no water left to fall from the sky.