Late Friday night, I sat in the gutter on Penrose Road (no, don't cue the violins), just near Lucas Street, and watched an electrical storm dance across the moaning southern horizon. It may well have been way out to sea. Lightning fired up practically every second over the course of an hour; ninety-nine percent of it was obscured by thick cumulus cloud (thus, sheet lightning).
It was a storm straight out of Shakespeare, Medieval England, all plays, short stories and novels carrying some cleansing metaphor. It was a storm that could end adventures, homes, towns, forests, dreams and lives, if the electricity slipped. The weird thing was the detachment from it, as my wife put it. You couldn't hear any thunder. My brother-in-law said some lightning isn't made for our ears.
I didn't feel small in face of all that electric power-play, I just felt privileged, maybe braver than before. Another storm like that would calm me in the presence of my own death.
LJ, January 23 2011.
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