As The Storms Go Rolling By

There’s something about electronic violence in the atmosphere that quiets me down. Kipling referred to it in The Jungle Books, about how rain seems to quiet down every sort of animal. Add that to the sound of the ocean (or Gulf of Mexico), and I’d be completely content to sit and listen to the world around me.

I live out in the country, so I can’t always be happy when a storm rolls by. If the power goes out while I’m working, I have a shitfit trying to recover anything I’d be working on. Over the past several years, I’ve learned to just do something non-electronic related if Zeus is causing a ruckus. The lost time I could have worked does tend to grate at me, though.

I did manage to take some time to sit on the sofa and watch the storm roll by. There was some lightning, and for a moment I thought I heard a tornado siren go off. As it turned out, it was just the wind blowing through the chimney.

Sometimes I get the urge to just run outside during a storm. The rain doesn’t bother me, and the thought of getting struck by lightning amuses me to no end. I know several people who’d attribute it to Thor and his hammer rather than some jackass human lightning rod in the middle of a storm. Still, I like smelling the air after a storm and feeling the thunder rattle my bones.

I wonder if ancient people liked it at all. Some might have, though the cowards that went into the caves were more likely to survive long enough to pass on their genes. Or maybe I’m just waxing too philosophical.

When I see lightning and hear thunder, I think that it’s something that even the dinosaurs probably had to deal with. All that’s going on is the exchange of electrons from the atmosphere to the ground. It affects animals all the same. I like that, because it reminds me that I am part of that which is around me. It makes the anxiety a little more bearable, and the depression a little less dark – even for just a moment.