exceptional excerpts

so, in reading lately, I come across passages that I think warrant remembering and, as suggested by my brother, I thought I'd start posting what I feel are exceptional excerpts from books I've read so that I have a record of them

the book of the moment is John Updike's "Marry Me" and it's a passage I came across last night and that, since upon waking today and being met with rain and more rain, it seemed that this passage was meant to be placed into this blog for future reference.

from page 113

"The rain talked to her, talked in a metallic tapping voice near the windows, in a softer voice as she moved to the center of the room, in no voice at all when she covered her face with her hands. Each passing car made a comet-shaped swish and splash on the road. Upstairs in the bathroom, the windows were misted and the rain-gutter at the eaves, damned with maple wings and seedlings, joked at her, gurgling, burlesquing the fall of her urine into the oval of water beneath her. As she moved about making beds, the rain whispered attic secrets-mice, shingles, dry wrapping paper, Christmas excelsior."


It kind of makes me want to clean house this morning as the last drops of rain tiptoe across my back deck...just so I can see what it might have to say to me.