May 30 -rain
May 30
It is the rainy season again at last. And they are beautiful, the rains and the skies they come out of. Partly, I think, because they are often sudden and violent. The beauty combined with a small inward rush of fear is an experience more intense than the usual. Everywhere thunderstorms are dramatic, but maybe even more so here. I can feel excitement and nervousness gather in my stomach as thunder rumbles and then crack! as the lightning splits the sky, turned abnormal shades of color.
Today as the sound of the storm is slowly building I look up to a sky of a uniform dark, hazy blue. Just a minute later I look up again to find what had been a solid slate of pure color forming into layers of fierce-seeming clouds. The wind picks up and starts lashing the palms back and forth, and finally a few drops start falling. First big, fat drops that you can almost count and see making their individual impressions on the ground, now grown polka-dotted. Then changing into a fine mist, blown strongly, slanting, chasing me farther onto the porch. Steadily gathering strength until now it is pouring down, turning foot-paths into small streams. All occasionally lit up by jagged, pinkish bolts of lightning. Now the rain is so heavy that it is hard to see through, and beyond a certain distance, all is just a grayish light.
Loving it and knowing its general nature, how can a storm still have the power to terrify a little? Maybe just the incredible size and speed, the power of it, is what scares us. Or the way we have been rushed inside out of them, effectively running away from them, all our lives. And the sound of thunder, low and rumbling like a predatory growl, as if we were about to be attacked.
It is the rainy season again at last. And they are beautiful, the rains and the skies they come out of. Partly, I think, because they are often sudden and violent. The beauty combined with a small inward rush of fear is an experience more intense than the usual. Everywhere thunderstorms are dramatic, but maybe even more so here. I can feel excitement and nervousness gather in my stomach as thunder rumbles and then crack! as the lightning splits the sky, turned abnormal shades of color.
Today as the sound of the storm is slowly building I look up to a sky of a uniform dark, hazy blue. Just a minute later I look up again to find what had been a solid slate of pure color forming into layers of fierce-seeming clouds. The wind picks up and starts lashing the palms back and forth, and finally a few drops start falling. First big, fat drops that you can almost count and see making their individual impressions on the ground, now grown polka-dotted. Then changing into a fine mist, blown strongly, slanting, chasing me farther onto the porch. Steadily gathering strength until now it is pouring down, turning foot-paths into small streams. All occasionally lit up by jagged, pinkish bolts of lightning. Now the rain is so heavy that it is hard to see through, and beyond a certain distance, all is just a grayish light.
Loving it and knowing its general nature, how can a storm still have the power to terrify a little? Maybe just the incredible size and speed, the power of it, is what scares us. Or the way we have been rushed inside out of them, effectively running away from them, all our lives. And the sound of thunder, low and rumbling like a predatory growl, as if we were about to be attacked.
posted by amandab at 5:05 AM
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