There is a certain amount of introspection that comes with watching the quiet rains fall, this is something I have felt throughout my entire life.  I remember being a child and playing in the backyard at my parents house...splashing through the puddles on the concrete shaped by my grandfathers hands...smooth and red-painted...watching the ripples spread from each minuscule droplet to race across the surface of the tiny puddles.  

I remember standing in the rain at my parents house, watching the rainwater pool in the driveway and begin to race down the small ditch my father dug to the massive puddle at the end of the driveway.  I would make small boats out of popsicle sticks, drawing racing numbers on them and racing stripes with sharpies before sending then bobbing down the tiny flow towards the puddle at the end.  

I remember standing in the gazebo in the Paso Robles City Park with a compilation CD I had so carefully made for my girlfriend at the time, standing there watching the rain drip from the eves.  Clutching the CD in its plastic sleeve, wiping the tiny beads of moisture on my shirt and peering out through the falling rain to wait for her to show up...the adolescent stomach churning twist of fear at the thought I would be left standing in the rain...the teenage-stupid heartleap of elation at the sight of her rushing through the rain.  

I remember sitting on my bed in the Ambassador hotel in Istanbul and watching the heavy drops of slow rain hit the ground outside my window...listening to the plaintive cry of the muezzin from the speakers atop the minaret of the Blue Mosque a kilometer distant calling the faithful to kneel for their evening prayers.  Seeing the ripples spread in the puddle beneath the window, beating time to the heart of a city of millions dropping to their knees in supplication to their god.

This morning, I stood on the rooftop of the building I am in, here in Thailand.  On one side of the building the worn street with its fairly uniform 4 story buildings on each side, one of the units across the street was abandoned and left with all its windows open...it has become a nesting place for birds of some sort, its windows gaping open with tattered curtains waving in the breeze...fluttering out for a moment before fluttering back in...back out...like the breath of a sleeping giant.  There are puddles of rain on the rooftop here, amid the pots holding small tropical flowers and trees.  The gentle early morning tropical rain falls into the puddles, sending ripples in slow motion across the surface.  I can hear the rain falling on the broad leafed jungle plants growing up to the back of the building, and I am transported back.

Back in time, back in distance to the first time I stood and stared into a puddle.  Probably wrapped in my little yellow and red jacket, wearing Sesame Street velcro shoes... all around the world I have watched the rain, seen it fall across the thousands of miles upon the billions of people, and when I stop to think about it, it is the same rain that has fallen around the globe...all part of the same system, the same molecules reused and recycled the globe over.  The same waters of life that gave us birth, carry us through our lives, and into which we slip upon our death.

And so I sit, in a classroom in Thailand, listening to the rain drum on the roof overhead listening to the sounds of a group of Tuareg playing into my headphones... Aman Iman... Water is Life... From a tribe who spend their existence wandering the sands of the Sahara, to the Eastern coast of the Gulf of Thailand...we are all tied together by the same waters that have bound us for uncounted millennium...  It is not from dust which we came, nor is it to dust we shall return, it is nothing so mundane.  From the first day our ancestors clawed themselves from the waters, to the day when we ourselves return and our lifeblood drains from us, it is to the waters we return.