Where I Was From

Stormy Weather

I'm sitting in my living room with only the dimmest lamps on, watching the front windows as if they were a TV. I wouldn't know how to explain to a local why it's thrilling to me just to watch the purple panes of sky framed by the nearly-bare tree branches as the remaining leaves pulse in the whispering rain. Could someone from the actual world understand the beauty of the whole sky strobing with lightning, then tearing itself apart in a crash of thunder, and best of all, that magic moment of anticipation in between?

I think only a Californian could fully appreciate it. Only someone trapped in that odd, dusty frontier where everyone forgets the outside world, turning inward to focus on their own glamour, real or illusory. If there were seasons there as there are here, would they remember that they are on earth, after all? How claustrophobic to think that the world out there never changes, but gets staler by the year until the tension's built up, and a few times in a generation, an earthquake wipes their slate clean.

Better to have rain to perform that function right. Better to crunch through the piles of yellow leaves. I could continue writing like a deranged Robert Frost but I'll stop now with the thought that whether or not a person's been told by too many writing professors that the world is a text, people are most definitely products of their environments, and I feel so much better off now that I'm here.

Labels: Chicago, memoir

posted by Leah @ 5:06 PM