What to Do When it Rains

"He who has food has many problems. He who has no food has only one problem."
-Proverb

My Spouse and I greatly like being at home. Now that November is here and the sorry wet weather is upon us, nothing gives us more joy than watching the rain from the comfort of indoors.
My mother sent me some tea yesterday; I had been without any for almost a week. I will only drink the tea I grew up with and I cannot get it here. I just don't much like the tea I find locally. How I felt when I drank a cup after so long almost made me thankful that I had run out of tea, it was that pleasant a feeling.
Today it is raining steadily and an old copy of 'The Fall' by Albert Camus was just delivered to our mailbox. It smells like an old library.
Speaking of libraries, last evening we picked up some films for a wet and windy weekend ahead. We brought home 'The Double Life of Veronique,' 'The Cave of the Yellow Dog,' and a box-set of Musashi Miyamoto films.
It was recommended by a friend that I seek out a book called 'No Plot? No Problem!' by Chris Baty. I plan to read it over the next few days. Perhaps it will, as it suggests, motivationally and physically speaking teach me how to write an entire book in thirty days,
I scan approximately forty to fifty pages of old documents a day which is happily decreasing the muddle in our apartment.
And at last: the Tom Waits CD, a masterpiece, no doubt, that I have been waiting for since May has finally arrived in our library; perhaps we will pick it up tonight. It only goes to prove that some things are worth waiting for. Patience, my Spouse always says about everything.
Those are very simple things to be glad about.
A few weeks ago we discovered another treasure in our library: 'Umberto D.' The film deserves its own review and I will do just that in good time. For now, all I shall say about the story is that it is set in Italy in the aftermath of World War Two. Umberto, an old man, is utterly lost. He does not have a place in the world anymore, despite his years of hard work, and society is rapidly leaving him behind. He has nowhere to go and nobody, nobody at all cares about him. My Spouse noted the film's description on the back of the DVD box: "Umberto’s simple quest to fulfill the most fundamental human needs-food, shelter, companionship- is one of the most heartbreaking stories ever filmed."
Food, shelter, companionship. Really, nothing else matters. Some will tell you differently but those are all that one needs to live, and to live happily.
My Spouse and I, these days, are content to read books, watch films at home and cook new kinds of food: we are, I am convinced, heedless of advertisements and immune to consumerism. Sometimes a little extra joy comes along such as a special book or some much-missed tea but most certainly we are not burning with a desire to own things or spend lavish amounts of money on ourselves.