I go out for a walk in the early evening on Thursday after finishing my work for the day. I’m trying to complete a particularly important chapter of my memoir, A Generation X Life, but I keep getting stuck on the last section.
I was also up late the night before writing the latest chapter of Copper’s Corner, the children’s ebook series I’ve published about life with my adopted cat Copper. And I was working on my website, genxchronicle.com. We cover news, culture and lifestyle through a Generation X lens.
So I head out around 5 pm for some air and some inspiration, and I sit on a bench on 30th Avenue in my neighborhood of Astoria, Queens.
An entire United Nations of people passes by me during the hour I spend on that bench, from Mexicans and Central Americans to Greeks to Balkan folks to South Asians to Middle Eastern people. Some women wear hijabs, others tight jeans and spandex on this beautiful 70 degree day.
It’s a true representation of the melting pot that is Queens. Everyone is mingling together in harmony. A woman in full black abaya walks by, and that weirds me out a little. Because I’m all for respecting the cultural differences of everyone, but a full-on heavy black dress that covers every part of a woman except her eyes seems like oppression to me. Call me an imperialist or a cultural chauvinist, but that’s how I see it.
I head home around 6, and I spend the next couple hours watching the Yankee game on my laptop, eating a sandwich, and just generally chilling out. I talk to my mom around 7, and she mentions that there may be a thunderstorm tonight in NYC.
Wow! That snaps me out of the slight melancholy I was feeling because of my writer’s block. I love nature, I love feeling its power, and a storm is just what I need to re-energize my soul.
After we hang up I make a mental note to go into the kitchen and sit by the window as soon as I hear the first drops of rain hit the air conditioner in the living room. My apartment faces the back of the building, and there are buildings right across the way from every window, so I have to keep the curtains shut.
But the kitchen is the exception. There’s a large window in the far end, and it looks out over a tall tree in a courtyard. It’s not the country, but for urban Queens this tree is pretty damn nice. So I often sit in my comfortable chair in front of the kitchen window and look out at that tree, and I do a lot of my writing from the kitchen table so I can get a view of the tree.
About fifteen minutes after making my mental note about the storm, I hear the first pitter patter of raindrops bouncing of the living room A/C. I grab my Irish whiskey mixed with diet Coke and head to my comfy chair by the kitchen windown. I turn out the lights for the full effect, and I sit back and enjoy nature’s show.
The rain starts slowly, but within minutes it’s thundering down. It sounds like a 19th century army marching in unison and firing off cannonball thrusts. It’s just super loud, and super powerful.
I pick up the scent of wet leaves coming off the tree, and it reminds me of summers spent whiling away time in rural bucolic day camps, of wild and adventurous road trips around Alaska and Canada’s Yukon territory, and of picking apples in upstate New York in the fall with the woman I loved the most of all the women I’ve known.
That’s what nature can do for you. It can just rock you to your core, and evoke emotions and memories you didn’t even know were there, or had long ago forgotten about.
After a few more minutes, the sky begins to light up with flashes of white brilliance. It’s lightning off in the distance. My heart begins to quicken as I contemplate the heat and brilliance of the electrical energy in the air.
And then all of a sudden, boom! A bolt of lightning streaks across the sky. It jolts me for a moment, and I briefly contemplate what would happen if a lightning bolt came bursting through my kitchen window and hit me dead on.
But then I decide to just not worry, and to enjoy nature’s poetry at work. There really is a beautiful show in the nighttime sky, so I sit back, listen to the rain and thunder, and watch the lightning explode. I’m in awe, and I feel grateful to be alive.
All my cares and worries have flown out the window, into that beautiful, completely and totally alive night time sky. With nature on fire, and with a warm feeling emanating from my toes to the top of my head, what could really be so bad?
Eventually the storm dies down, and the rain slows to a soft trickle.
A few more minutes and the rain is gone. All is silent outside my kitchen window. The tree is wet and heavy. It smells like pine cones, burning wood, jasmine and roses.
The storm has passed, and nature has gone back to its slumber.
I sit down at my laptop at the kitchen table, and I say “Hey Google, play Iron and Wine.” They’re an acoustic band that my friend Rachel from college recommended today.
I open up the Chromebook, tell Google Home to turn up the volume on the music, and I get down to the business of writing about the storm. Because when something moves you that strongly, and makes you think and feel so many things so powerfully, you might as well share it with the world.
So that’s exactly what I do.
