By Hannah Uffens
I did not understand the power of literature until Tom Robbin's voice poured out of the classroom speakers.
I came into my junior year of high school with little idea of future plans, not being able to firmly decide on what it was I loved and wanted to make a solid part of my life. There was constant badgering of college plans and future professions but I struggled between the verdict of working on an organic farm in Europe when I was 18 or shedding my life away in medical school. Overall, I had little desire to continue education and learning in something I had slight interest in, as it seemed my current classes persisted to be. Additionally, the stress my high school put on choosing a major that dealt with math and science, especially for females, was influential to a point of destruction. That autumn of pitted future doubts, I enrolled in a creative writing class that had barely slipped the cunning hand of budget cuts. This was a decision that has changed my life.
Throughout the semester I cultivated a love for creative writing that was undeniably spilt from the influence of my teacher, Mr. Davis. The works for inspiration he handed out all peaked my interest and the first poem he handed out, I memorized because I read it over and over so many times. You never knew what to expect, one day you might waltzing to the rhythms of poems and the next you might be reading to the pace of his harmonica. We wrote celebrity fantasy stories, conducted interviews, recited plays and anything you could conjure in your mind was valid art on paper. The assignments felt light and fulfilling at the same time.
And then one day the frivolity of it all came to an end. That morning Mr. Davis dusted off the projector and played a recording of Tom Robbins titled “You Moist Remember This.” Some loved the nostalgia the old recording brought, some loved the reference to the rain we understood completely. But I loved the words. “I'm here for the weather. In the deepest, darkest heart of winter, when the sky resembles bad banana baby food for months on end, and the witch measles that meteorologists call "drizzle" are a chronic gray rash on the skin of the land, folks all around me sink into a dismal funk.” I learned that Tom Robbins did not live far from me. That he too had experienced the never ending rainy days that accompanied living in Seattle. Yet I had never heard the weather expressed this way. The weather-a topic saved only for mom’s trying to persuade their children to wear a coat to school, and awkward silences on first dates. He continued, “rain will primitivize the cities, slowing every wheel, animating every gutter, diffusing commercial neon into smeary blooms of esoteric calligraphy.”
Although I had began to develop a love for literature and writing, I had yet to experience this level of appreciation. I became obsessed with these words, would listen to them and read them in my mind over and over. It has taken some years to understand why my love for this work mirrored the rain in Seattle, never ending and continually building. In the beginning of the quote above, Robbins uses a simile and a metaphor to give deeper understanding to his audience. Although I had been under this sky for many years, I had never heard it more accurately described until he compared it to “bad banana baby food.” It is a description that all can conjure in their minds with equal fascination and repulsion. The alliteration of this line also brings focused attention to the description and boldness to his words. His metaphor of drizzle brings dimension to his writing and vividness to the image of a continual rain. Additionally, choice of diction in the word “sink” denotes water, but portrays individuals reacting emotionally to the constant rain. It furthers iterates Robbin’s idea that the rain becomes an integral part of someone who lives in this weather.
I am still utterly fascinated with Robbin’s ability to take something so ordinary and with the use of literary tools, make it beautiful. There is so much power in words. I have learned that to extend conversation beyond the typical and integrating greater elements of writing can impact the reader greatly. It can connect people who live thousand of miles away, and those who live in the same city. Since I heard this Tom Robbins reading I have strived to learn the art of writing and the art of reading so that I too can see and explain the ordinary as beautiful.
