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Going Outside
The thought was running rampant across my mind. The thought of how lethargic it makes you feel to be inside when it’s raining. Longing to be free. Not to be looking at the lightning from a window but to be offering yourself to it with arms in the air, screaming your own name and what it means to you. The thunder speaks to those who listen. Its power is love. Listening was not enough for me tonight. I had to connect with its words. Equality at its finest is getting your back soaked by lying on the wet grass and looking up at the falling rain that covers your clothes in sweet euphoria. This is living. Being inside is not.
I sat there for many an hour staring at the storm and wishing. All I wanted was to be of the weather, within it, feeling its embrace leaving behind dryness and its entitlements. To pass the time I talked to myself about absolutely nothing, just to keep within the blurred boundaries of insanity. The almost trustworthy man on the radio said the storm wouldn't stop all night, and I forced myself to believe him. I guess that meant I didn't have to rush myself in contemplating an escape. I knew beyond all doubt that I wouldn't be kept inside while Mother Nature was showing what she was capable of. So after all the contemplation of virtually nothing, I had chosen the only option I had given myself. I was going outside.
On the way to the door in my room I briefly looked at my raincoat. I figured that the raincoat is like contraception, and I wanted to fall pregnant. It was left hanging on my bedpost. All I was wearing was a brown t-shirt and a pair of pants with a camouflage pattern on them. I was barefoot too. Barefoot was the only way to do this kind of thing, even though it takes away all the feeling in your feet. Who needs feeling anyway? So I walked out the front door with nothing more than a sideways glance from my mum. She knew that I liked to go outside when the weather was like this and she had stopped trying to keep me inside years ago, when it had proved impossible.
Just a few steps out the door and I felt king of all I saw before me. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that my house is higher up than any on the street and I looked down on them, or maybe it was just because I was the only living thing in sight; everyone else was inside. Still, standing here wasn't going to give the feeling I really wanted because I was still covered by the front porch. So I took a deep breath and began my 'journey' with a refreshing run across the front lawn with an occasional jump and click of my heels. Sure, I was hoping I wouldn't fall on the slippery green mass at my feet but it wouldn't have mattered if I did, all that mattered was getting up afterwards. I didn't slip after all. From the front yard I continued down the street for about 5 houses and then turned into the alleyway that led to the park. The park was my destination for the moment but it occurred to me that I would most likely end up somewhere else by the time I had satisfied myself.
Down the alleyway and across the normally busy road at the bottom I went. Slightly raised by a small slope that went up from the flat grass, I gazed as best I could in the dark at the seeming perfection of what I saw. The vast opening in the congesture of my town, a window for a true vision of the ominous sky. The park. That vision set a smile on my face for many days afterwards. As much as I wanted to stay there taking in the greatness of that image, which almost acted as an august notion, I was beckoned to join in with it. So I went as I was ordered.
For such a seemingly calm person, I could scream like no other I knew. During a run to the center of the darkened green land, I screamed to the powers. Wishes and orders, threats and thanks, all at the same time. The slight letting up of the storm that happened then made me feel like the weather listened to me. Then when it redoubled its assault I knew it listened. After that I stood in the middle of the emptiness and let loose the most powerful yell even I had ever heard. "How did I ever end up here? Letting loose my joy to the one who created it! Bleeding rain, as you are known to do, competing with the thunder for a desire to be heard! How did I ever end up here?" It was almost like I knew nothing of what I spoke, and the words were not of my design. It all made sense though. Here I was, standing in the rain without a care in the world. Well, at least nothing that I really felt at the time, reality and its burdens seemed so far away. I wanted to savour this feeling until all feeling had gone away. Nature had other ideas.
It was beyond me how long I had been out here, though it was made clear in the best way possible. On the horizon to the east the clouds were turning from the strange purplish black that I had become used to, into the fair grey of a winter morning. The sun was coming to end the night, the ever so glorious night. It seemed to chase away as they promenaded off into the west. The best way I could imagine to come down off the ecstasy of the night was to watch the sun rise. The end of something so beautiful was never so rewarding. The reward: knowing that the storm was retreating while I stood my ground. I had taken everything the storm had thrown at me and I endured while it had diminished. After watching the great body in the sky send its glow to my part of the world, I wandered home, soaking wet and already feeling the cold in my chest beginning its assault. It’s worth it though. I reached my house and turned around to look at the world one last time. Memories drifted off with the clouds, or remained there in the grass where I had found them.
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