Electrical Storm - U2

Outside my office window the sky grew a sickly yellow. Leaves were brushed by unseen brooms and a bird struggled to maintain a straight flight. The trees bent backwards in unison like a corps de ballet. Wind swirled down the spears of the Air Force Memorial as though demons had made themselves visible in the here and now. The sky darkened from its unearthly yellow to a dark gray fog. The city was swallowed under its heavy blanket. Thunder began to rumble and rain fell in gusts and torrents. Lightning zapped through the dust in bright white cracks.
Now the storm has past us by, the rain has slowed and the trees are waving gently, they are washed bright green. The slate gray sidewalks by the memorial shine, as does the air around it. I can still hear the thunder overhead, and see white lines of lightning in the distance, and some still close, but we aren't in the middle of it anymore. Once again we breath a sigh of relief and go back to our work. The immediacy of the electric storm doesn't get in the way of the work day.

I am always awed by the natural power of these storms. So often we forget just what that power means. So often we view it as troublesome or a nusiance in our day. Occasionally we are reminded of what nature can do, Katrina, the cyclone in Myanmar. But here, where nothing seems to happen, where no recessions or house market crashes or food shortages seem to affect us much these little storms are like wake up calls for me. They shake me out of my safe coccoon that I get lost in and wash everything clean from the dust 'more dangerous than silica'.

Lately I have been reading about Johnny Cash and his life and times. It makes me want to do something with my own life and times, the storm reminds me of how wild and unpredictable life really is. Sometimes I forget that and think it is a mundane cycle of working for money, paying bills with that money, going home to your apartment which is supplied by working. I'm trying to find ways to subvert the cycle, to use the freetime I have at my job to get out of the cycle and actually do some living. More tomorrow on the small details of what that living is.