life and rainbows

On my way to class on Wednesday I saw a rainbow. It made me think of other times I’d seen rainbows and also of how it had been so long since I’d seen one. I’m taking a Spanish cinema class where we talk in Spanish so the proper word to call it by the time I’d made it from the rainy pathway to the classroom inside was “arco iris.” I told the class I’d seen one. It wasn’t visible from inside.

Everyone got excited but they couldn’t see it even by craning their necks at the windows because a building was blocking the way. By then it had started hailing. So no one went outside to invesitgate. We were talking about the film “Guantanamero” and I mentioned I’d heard the song from it a million times but had never known the context, which was true. I had heard the song a million times. I knew it by heart, but, until that moment, I’d never known what it meant.

And by then, even though it wasn't that big a deal, and even though it was hailing, I wanted to go outside and see the rainbow again, just because everything was reminding me of those little pieces of information that get picked up here and there that start to make things suddenly make sense, whether it’s just a song or maybe a moment or even your whole life. Life can feel strange. But life is like a series of little bits of information that get picked up along the way and make the picture shine through clearer somehow, like the rainbow breaking through the sun-drenched clouds right before my class, rain and hail and all.