brigdh

Huge thunderstorm here tonight. The kind that it should be much too late in the season to have: lightening that shocks the whole sky to blinding white and bolts that are as clearly defined against the clouds as a scar, afterimages echoing in your eyes to make them look like they linger for long seconds. Too often to count the seconds for the storm's distance; bolt after bolt after bolt makes it impossible to tell which thunder goes with which lightening.

And the thunder- not growls or rolls like smaller storms, far away storms, but huge, heavy sounds, like something tearing or falling and shattering.

I got caught in the first drizzle of the rain as I walked the half-block from the bus stop to my building; it wasn't even enough rain to bother getting out my umbrella. It's unseasonably warm, too; this'll probably be the last rain of the year that's soft and just barely cool enough to make walking in it nice.

I discovered late last year that the windows in this building have sills just wide enough to sit on. The windows are set back into the wall a half-foot or so, enough space for me to sit on the tops of the white-painted cinder-blocks of the building's outside wall and tuck my legs up. I could even close the curtains with me inside, if I wanted to hide or make a little warm bubble of space. I sat up there to watch the storm, and the people hurrying across the courtyard below as the rain went from drizzle to torrential, the man huddled beneath an outcrop of roof to smoke a cigarette. I had the window cracked open; not enough to let the rain in, but enough to hear it, the hiss and drum and rush of the water, a faint siren, and everything else faded away.