What is Rain?

In college I took a poetry seminar, not because I had any interest in poetry, but because I thought it would be easy. (Not that it’s important, but I was right. There was no homework. We didn’t even have to write poetry.) The professor’s name was Ryan Tucker. He was an adjunct, I think, and couldn’t have been much older than I am now. Often he’d begin class with a video or a song, sometimes to illustrate a point, but also because he apparently thought learning should be fun, a virtue I would appreciate long before I came to recognize it.

What I liked so much about Ryan was that he taught poetry not as a craft or an art but as a way of thinking. He’d ask us questions like, What is a car? And we’d answer something like, A car is a vehicle. And he’d say, Yes, but what else is a car? And we’d say, A car is a mode of transportation.

Yes, but what else is a car?

A car is an expensive necessity.

Yes, but what else?

Eventually we’d give up. Then Ryan would come out with something like, A car is a chair with four wheels.

Ahhh.

It was like he was a magician, and had just performed the most wonderful trick.

We’d go home and come back the next week hungry for more. We’d listen to Ryan’s song, or watch his video, and await the question. And then it would come: What is rain?

Every object, every concept, comprises layers of somethingness. A car is a mode of transportation, but it is also an expensive necessity, but it is also a chair strapped to four wheels and an engine. Ryan was teaching us to peel back the layers.

Whenever I’m thinking about something, I’m really trying to answer the question, What is rain?

Rain is water that falls from the sky.

Yes, but what else?

Qs & As

Q: What is a circle?
A: A circle is every point that is equally far from another point.

Q: What is writing?
A: Writing is thinking on paper.

Q: What is a person?
A: A person is a story that tells itself.