It’s thundering in San Francisco.
It never thunders in San Francisco.
It thunders in Mississippi. A lot.
I’ve always loved thunder. The rain I could do without; but thunder and lightning, I always loved that. Before moving out here, I guess I took for granted that other parts of the country don’t have thunder. As strange as it sounds, I’d never known a time where months would go by without hearing or seeing it. So I didn’t know what a gaping hole it would leave when months and years did go by.
I wouldn't consider myself to be the outdoorsy type.
As my friend Amy would say, “I’m an indoor kitty.” Thus, I’m not typically known for going out into nature and becoming one with it. That being said, I think I might want to reconsider. Tonight, as I laid on my bed, my entire apartment filled with light followed by a long lasting boom. The kind of boom that rattled my chest. Other than the rattling, everything got still. I’d forgotten what it felt like, how electrically charging and grounding it feels. It’s like the sky gets a voice and spontaneously decides to use it in the most garish of ways. I’d forgotten.
I’d forgotten, honestly, that’s there’s really even any nature left at all. I see concrete. I see cement. I see bricks. And all of these things are beautiful, you understand. I love them. But they aren’t alive. They never were.
So as granola as it sounds, when the heavens opened up and gushed water down my nasty sidewalk. And that sky started yelling and the light demanded my attention, for just a brief moment something quickened in me. As if some nostalgic memory vibrated its way back to the forefront of my mind… there was a time when it felt real. When life was real, when the earth was real. When there was something bigger than myself and everything my eyes can see. I remember what life felt like. Nothing made sense yet everything did. There wasn’t much to know really. Not much to plan for because not much was understood.
I think I know too much now.
I know what to look for, plan for and avoid. I know what I think I want and what I think I don’t want because that one time I saw that one thing, that made me think that particular thing, that I instinctively knew I wanted to avoid. So I assimilated that and carried on about my way. Multiply that occurrence times our lifetime and you’ll get why we are the way we are today. That’s typically how we evolve. That or the desired reciprocal occurs and we see what we hope for and decide that’s in fact what we want to pursue. Either way I think I know too much. And I don’t make near enough room for mystery.
There once was a time in my life when I proclaimed to be the chief investigative spy and established the other neighborhood kids to be my support troops. They were instructed to systematically report back to me their findings. They never found much. The thing is that was a long time ago. I guess now, I find myself to have adapted to a life where everything makes sense. Where everything is aligned as it should be. I have the insight. I have the power. I am ultimately the only one responsible for my destiny. So back the fuck up. But that thunder did something to me. It reminded me that no matter how hard I yell, my voice will never boom throughout the earth. No matter how hard I stomp my feet the world will not stop being more powerful. Egocentric as I may be, there’s a force so much bigger, and so much greater than me and my narrow worldview. And if I’m totally honest, bigger than my own desires. It’s not just about me - it sucks. Because a part of me thinks it should be. I swear there’s a cubby hole in my mind where I roam about certain parts of the earth ruling as Queen. I’d be lying if I told you this wasn’t true.
But I’m not a Queen. I’m Laura Katherine. And I remember when life made sense. When everything made sense because everything wasn’t on me. The weight of the world wasn’t all my responsibility. It was on something bigger than me. Something looking out for me. Someone I could trust. Because I guess I hadn’t been alive long enough to believe all the lies.
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