I’ve always loved thunderstorms and see them as one of the really good reasons to live in Oklahoma.  Last night’s was a beaut.

It took me a little space of time to get out of my head and into the moment, but with persistent non-effort, I was able to get there.

Sinatra assures me he was abolutely NOT spooked by the thunder, he just wanted up in my lap because he always does that to remind me when it’s bedtime.

I sat at the kitchen table between the open window above the sink and the open sliding glass patio doors that look out on my front courtyard. 

I turned out all the lights, setting aside my book (Absurdistan by Gary Shteyngart, recommended to me by privacy shattered Sharon), but left the Coltrane CD playing in the background.

Early in the storm, I’d gone into my backyard to watch the rain as it first began to fall, retreating in time to a sheltered place under the eaves, smoking a cigaret and watching the sheet lightning erupt only to be surprised by a bolt that shot down so close by that the thunder literally shuddered my chest wall as it passed by.

No time to be on the laptop, I shut it down and unplugged it from the wall to avoid the worst case scenario.

In a sense, weather is elemental.  A sphere of water and dry land encased in an atmosphere of gasses and warmed by the sun.  And, of course, it’s also so complex that our best computers can’t predict it.

To be outside and directly experiencing violent weather is to be put in one’s place by Mother Nature.  Gaia reminds her children that they can be swept away, along with all human artifact, by her powers.  It’s humbling and thrilling to be in the presence of a goddess.

Sinatra and I sat at the portal staring into the courtyard for an untold period of time, he on my lap and me mindlessly and mildly stroking his pelt, nudged now and again into a rub of the crown of his head or a scratch under the chin. During a lull, I noticed his purr thrumming against my thighs, a miniature of the shuddering of my chest by the thunder.

We enjoyed the raw experience of the smell of wet earth and the tang of ozone that comes with lightning and rain.  We listened as rain and wind mindlessly and mildly stroked the pelt of green tendrils of living Earth. The light from the sky was sometimes staccato, freezing the outside in a split second of illumination, other times, the swaying leaves and vines and bushes were as much felt to move as observed.

At 10 p.m. or so, the outdoors was inhospitable, 85 degrees and humid, a sweatbox.  At midnight, it was cool and clean and fresh.  At 11 p.m., my mind was busy, busy, busy with tumultuous and meaningless thoughts of trivial, mundane, quotidian matters.  By 1 a.m., I was serene and relaxed, united with the cat the trees the grass the wind the rain the low clouds.

There is a time and a season for everything.  Turn, turn, turn.

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