2004-08-05
And Thus I Spent My Afternoon... Being Courted By A Storm...

hearing: Idioteque - Radiohead
reading: Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
wearing: black and gray

She sat outside on an uncomfortable deck chair, curled up in a weird position, cradling a book before her.

Her eyes hung heavy with the warmth and humidity of the air, and her own exhaustion. Barely open in a sleepy gaze, they roved down the pages and slowly and eagerly devoured the dreamy bliss of the starlit world of two lovers in harmony unfolding before her. Her parched lips parting every now and again to emit a heavy, melancholy sigh as she forced herself out of reveries to continue enmeshed in this fictitious rose coloured reality.

Her fingers scanned down the pages, skipped off the paper and fell to gently tousling her hair, for wind there was not to do it for her. She breathed in the heavy scent of rain which was being slowly exhaled by the astral sky above her in a weird mix of piercing blue sunshine and corpulent dun clouds pregnant with moisture.

Her small frame trembled with the expectation of a storm, and the gentle words whispering from the story into her torpid consciousness.

When that portion of the story finished, she slowly closed the book thus flinging off the flow of passionate existence it opened onto.

She arose and stood still for a moment, tossing her head about and absently gazing at the young, lively trees about her, then shook her head with a solemn gaze, and turned back inside.

Several hours later, the storm fell in a fury. Precisely on time, at three o'clock. The rainy thunderstorms always rushed in at just this hour during this time of the year. The damp heat of the day was always relieved by a cool rushing rain, although strength of weather varied day to day.

This day brought a particularly violent storm. The rain fell in huge drops. Large spilling tears of a doleful joy known only by the restrained glory of tattered Nature.

The girl slipped outside and twitched in the rain for a few effulgent moments as a soft wind gently caressed and fondled her white skin and shining hair. She stood with her hands spread out to catch the droplets, until a huge lightning bolt fell down to the earth, followed by a roaring concussion of thunder. Monstrous hands applauding the plummeting of electricity to land.

The lightning chased the girl inside, but she halted a moment in the doorway and stole a gaze back across the earth and up to the sky as a bolt flashed and illuminated her eyes, fixed in a wild and passionate gaze.

She chased shadows down the steps and flew to her room, where she jumped across her desk nimbly and gracefully like a human spider, to reach her windowseat.

She perched thereon, quivering with excitement as the storm raged outside her window. Her eyes darted across the sky, alert and frenetic with glee. She pushed against the window as though it would turn to liquid and let her outside, to become a nymph of the storm.

Her soul was raging in an indescribable manner. The violence of a storm resonated and contrasted beautifully with the calmness of her nature. This one called and beckoned her to join the rain in a strange dance. For her soul to disseminate into and fuse with the elements. Her soul clamored to be one with the storm and the storm desired to devour her within itself.

But neither of these could be so. This turbulent suspiring longing of desire between a girl and a storm was impossible to satiate. She would sigh and watch this strange lover brashly transpire until the wind rushed it onward to the footsteps of other innocent young psyches or to dissipate back to that which bore it.

A tear coursed down her cheek and her �me blew silent, unseen kisses to the storm.

She crawled softly to her bed, and curled up beneath the covers, and fell asleep with a despairing sigh, with strange, incoherent renderings of her darling, unattainable lover, the wild thunderstorm, as an insurrection of Nature.

before & & after