One of the things I disliked about the house where I lived for the past three years was the lack of a porch. It had only a small peaked roof over a three by four foot slab of concrete at the front door, too small for really sitting and appreciating the world. I don’t sit on the porch where I live often enough, but what has consistently gotten me to make use of the hand me down plastic chairs my mother gave me is a good flash and bang and soaking the world thunder storm.
As it so happens I am writing this while sitting on the porch during just such an event. Before retrieving the laptop I was standing out here, just on the edge of the porch, my tee shirt dampening from the nearly torrential downpour and pondering just why it is that I so love a good thunder storm. Initially, I considered that my appreciation stemmed from the fact that for all humanities achievments we are rather powerless in the face of a storm. We can certainly on a small scale channel the rain and dissipate the lightning, softening the punch as it were. We cannot stop that blow from landing entirely though. We must settle for the boxer’s method of taking the occasional punch and shaking it off.
While that lack of power when faced off against nature could be why I so enjoy sitting here counting off the seconds between the strike and the bone shaking boom, I don’t think it is the answer which is most true. I don’t know the answer which is entirely true. I am certainly one of the most navel gazing people I know, but even I fail at times to fully plumb the depths. I do however considering the following reason which feels the most true.
I live a relatively small life. My day has never included a point at which I must make a decision with international reach. In fact I have seen such a small amount of this world that to call it “very little” (as I was about to do) would be a collosal understatement. While in global and certainly geological terms a thunder storm might be but a speck, in human terms it is massive. It dwarfs us. As such it serves to reset my sense of scale.
As I move through the world, waking, working, and sleeping, it shrinks. The boundaries of my day to day world could be walked in a matter of hours. Then the sky darkens. A low rumble finds its way into my ear. A single drop of water falls onto the back of my hand, so small I question its existence. Then the sky is rent assunder by a bolt hurled down from the heavens and it begins. As I stand and watch, it reminds me that I am so small and the world is so big.
[...] So the night of that storm, my internet connection went down. Next day, still down and I was leaving for the weekend for the Grandfather Mountain Highland Games so I didn’t get around to getting it fixed until today. Realized in the interim though how much of my contact with the outside world has become internet based (news, weather, email, blogs, etc.). [...]