This weather is lovely. It is raining, and thunder has moved to the south east, and will pass over us again as this front moves over us. I got home just in time to avoid a hard and remarkably cool downpour, and immediately afterwards a new, unsummer wind was tugging at the plants on the terrace and roof. A pause and the next storm cell hung over us with bone-splitting crashes of thunder following lightning strikes. The rain falling on the skylights is reminscent of rain on the loved corrugated roofs of my chidhood and of my parents' house now, in Cape Town... I grew up with thunderstorms, but when we left the Free State and moved to the Cape, we lost the drama and acquired steady, soaking rains and long green winters. More water in the Cape (and more mountains), but less atmospheric wonder. Moving to New York's thunderstorms brought me home, in a way.
Rain makes it good to be home. Perhaps a sort of cave-old complacency: shelter, safety, prosperity, endorphin-saturated introspection.
Your description of weather, rain and storms reminds me of Tolkien's, who knew like no one else how to build a life-like scene, complete with sounds and tastes and moods, not in a chapter of a book but right around the reader in real time...
ReplyDeletePerhaps the thunderstorms of Bloemfontein stayed in his blood? :-)
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