Week 8- Everything Matters.
What a Storm can do
A few days ago the sky went black with storm: five o’clock looked like eight o’clock and when the rain came it fell out of the sky in a cascade like waterfalls falling over a cliff. Cars had to pull over, trees shook. I was soaked though in the dash from my car to my door a distance of about 20 feet. I had to strip down and wring out my clothes. A muddy river took over the street and for the fifteen minutes it lasted, it felt like we were somewhere else. We were no longer living our urban existence with a Barnes and Noble down the road. We were in a world where water crashed down on our heads and rivers blocked our passage. It was beautiful and dangerous and I couldn’t leave the window and I felt a strange responsibility toward that storm—like I should leave my house and stop hiding behind the glass.
I stayed indoors of course—we all usually do. The protection of the glass actually allows all that chaos to be beautiful. If filters out the wet and the cold and the mud and the struggle, and leaves just the strangeness of tossed branches and a street river. Yet it also filters out tangible, tactile experience. In the dash from the car, a stream of water pushed dirt into my shoes and water ran down my neck and I held my groceries and my two-year old like all our lives depended on it. At the window, I just couldn’t take the storm that seriously.
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