Weather

Moira once told me I was the only person she knew for whom talking about weather was not small talk. A great gift to have such a perceptive and attentive friend. To me, weather is an elemental passion. I once walked to work in tornado weather, one set down just across the river. Wild wind, driving rain, green light, just amazing. The nights at Fort Riley when the thunder bounded over the plains and I woke, sitting up, with my heart racing before I even heard the booming, the whole barracks rattling, then on fire with the lightening from the next volley. Terror stripped of it's fear, no room for shoulds and morals, no ideas or tenderness, just raw reality.

When the trains stopped at Park Street, and I ran through the dark morning of horizontal gushes of rain to work, the solid world no longer on offer, only this oceanic intrusion into once familiar sidewalks, I struggled to push through, hoping to break the surface somewhere. Even cold, wet, out of breath, out of air, at that moment, I would not have traded exhilaration for a safe, dry cab. Ten hours later, I'd have traded anything for dry jeans to get home in, but that's annoyance and chafing.

I remember walking in the desert behind my brother's house in Phoenix, in July. That immense heat that pressed into me, squeezing me out of my skin and out to the hazy horizon.


Walking to school one day when the car wisely refused to start, when the high that day would be -10F, the air crackling.

So, I wait for the front to hit, sometime Tuesday night, Wednesday, roaring in and erasing all mortal plans.