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I got very wet, standing outside in the parking lot, or on the sidewalk, or by the generator. I moved a lot more after the heavy heavy downpour stopped, because it no longer hit me so hard and forced me to feel it...
When I got out there, it was like the sky was a sea of air and foam, instead of water and foam. The waves billowed by me, threatening to push me over, the spray from each one hit me in the face, and I had to continuously suck on my lip to keep the water from filling the air above my mouth and drowning me.
I saw lightning strike two blocks away, and almost wished it had hit me, not because I wanted to die right then, but because I wanted to feel undiluted -- not power, but... intensity, running through me or over my saturated skin. I reveled in the toneless nearby shriek that is nothing like thunder; lightning sounds like it smells, close up. Acrid but clean.
I had an epiphany about the meaning of the word multitude. I could see each individual drop, when there were so many of them hitting the pavement, and they made patterns I could almost read, but they kept changing. And then I thought, that is how the universe must be. There are so many, many points of existence; galaxies, stars, planets... and during the life of the universe they must change, too. Nebulae make new stars, supernovae die and make holes in the surface...
As I was standing near, slightly under a tree at the edge of the lot, a small branch -- a four-foot stick, really -- fell from it, about two inches in front of my face. I jumped a little, with a kind of invincible cold shock, and laughed at it. A guy standing in his garage across the street looked at me.
I got a few odd looks over the course of my hour-long vigil in the rain, but I think it is a tribute to the potential open-mindedness of our community that everyone either understood why I was out there, or could guess well enough to just smile and shake their heads (or, in the case of a couple worried, superstitious people, tell me affably that, come on, I'd get pneumonia with no shoes).
Now I am cold and stiff, but it is the best kind of feeling cold and stiff, when you are in a warm place, or can put your toes in the warm hollows of your knees and wrap warmth around you. I dried my hair in the blower in the bathroom at school, waiting for Reggie's sectional to be over, and it fluffed and left me feeling fairly leonid, instead of striped... but then, we girls don't have manes. My mistake.
When I got out there, it was like the sky was a sea of air and foam, instead of water and foam. The waves billowed by me, threatening to push me over, the spray from each one hit me in the face, and I had to continuously suck on my lip to keep the water from filling the air above my mouth and drowning me.
I saw lightning strike two blocks away, and almost wished it had hit me, not because I wanted to die right then, but because I wanted to feel undiluted -- not power, but... intensity, running through me or over my saturated skin. I reveled in the toneless nearby shriek that is nothing like thunder; lightning sounds like it smells, close up. Acrid but clean.
I had an epiphany about the meaning of the word multitude. I could see each individual drop, when there were so many of them hitting the pavement, and they made patterns I could almost read, but they kept changing. And then I thought, that is how the universe must be. There are so many, many points of existence; galaxies, stars, planets... and during the life of the universe they must change, too. Nebulae make new stars, supernovae die and make holes in the surface...
As I was standing near, slightly under a tree at the edge of the lot, a small branch -- a four-foot stick, really -- fell from it, about two inches in front of my face. I jumped a little, with a kind of invincible cold shock, and laughed at it. A guy standing in his garage across the street looked at me.
I got a few odd looks over the course of my hour-long vigil in the rain, but I think it is a tribute to the potential open-mindedness of our community that everyone either understood why I was out there, or could guess well enough to just smile and shake their heads (or, in the case of a couple worried, superstitious people, tell me affably that, come on, I'd get pneumonia with no shoes).
Now I am cold and stiff, but it is the best kind of feeling cold and stiff, when you are in a warm place, or can put your toes in the warm hollows of your knees and wrap warmth around you. I dried my hair in the blower in the bathroom at school, waiting for Reggie's sectional to be over, and it fluffed and left me feeling fairly leonid, instead of striped... but then, we girls don't have manes. My mistake.
