Bravest When Alone, Courageous with Strangers

Fellow Bloggers and Audience Members Alike,

I may have dropped the ball this past month by not posting about the beginning of the school year, but fear not! I am back in action and plan to post consistently once again. Now let's see what I've been up to in a very non-linear temporal movement because, well, timey-wimey.

When I say jump, you say:

Well alright. 

Until a few days ago, the weather had been rather wet. But the days weren't damp from that boring old rain or fog we get in Newport Beach.You see, early September felt a firm nostalgia for the past summer months of that Vacationland atmosphere and clung desperately to the whimsy of sudden storms . Though the students of Bates were dropping the hot season to their sides as they exchanged beach bags for backpacks, sweaters and schedules, the weather made one last valiant effort to cling to chaos.

One muggy evening after dinner, a few of us were walking to each of our homes. As we got closer to Frye street, more individuals parted ways until just Olivia and I were walking down the road. Ahead of us were darkening clouds piled upon each other atop trees keeping still, looking up in tense silence, pursing their lips and waiting. A lightning flash. Olivia and I comment on the lightning flash. 

"Did you see the lightning?" 

"I did."

We waited for a thunderous boom but the lightning seemed too resigned to the fact that we were too far away to make an attempt to scream at us from across the large room and rather would just wave its arms around to gain our attention. It was heat lightning, is what I'm trying to say.

We were in front of Pierce House. Usually, we would walk past it, I would retire to my house, which was before Olivia's, and I would  probably stay inside for the rest of the night. However, Ashleen had left her cardigan at the dinner table, so I volunteered to place it in her room while Olivia went home. The offer was accepted. No one was in Ashleen's room, so I placed the cardigan gently onto her bed as if I were a parent laying down their drowsy child whom had fallen asleep in the wrong place. 

I walked back outside and saw the lightning busying itself with illuminating gloomy clouds. I stopped in front of my house and looked up at the sky again. Flash. It wasn't the best viewing spot for lightning watching. And Mount David was not something I was willing to climb at that moment in time. So I headed down Frye street, chin tilted upwards, deciding to meet up with the storm. 

The previous weekend I had taken a walk down to the cemetery that borders the Androscoggin river for an Environmental Capstone class assignment. After navigating through all tombstones and paths, I found a rock that jutted out into the river and sat there while sipping hot chocolate from my thermos and listening to the podcast "Welcome to Night Vale". So when I started following the lightning storm, which was in the direction of the river, I knew where to go to find an open bit of sky to view the fantasia of gods fighting in the heavens.

 Once I reached the Barbarick Barbarick dentist office on the busy highway (named Main Street in this section of Lewiston; An excellent joke opportunity gone wasted), I turned left onto the dirt road dotted with hazy yellow street lights. As I moved steadily towards my destination, I passed by a group of townies pattering on the porch of a home cluttered with wind chimes that hung sullenly. No one was looking up at the sky. I wasn't sure it it was because heat lightning was customary in Maine or because the storm wasn't close enough to interest them. I carried on. Things were still quiet as I got to the cemetery, deathly silent, if you will. It was dusk, the night was rushing up to meet me, and gates to the cemetery were closed. I wasn't sure if this was meant to keep me out, but I decided that even if it was, I could feign some sort of naivete if I got caught wandering through the tombstones. It wasn't as if I planned to desecrate any graves, after all, though the night was still young. I walked around the barrier into the cemetery, keeping my eye on the one illuminated window in the groundskeeper's house. 

I plodded down the sloping pathway towards the trees that lined the river, acutely aware of the noise the soles of my converse on the gravel were making. Once I was beyond the view of the groundskeeper's house I turned on the flashlight app on my iphone. I reached the curtain of trees hiding the river and my feet stuttered and stumbled down roots to the flat jutting rock I had sat on less than a week ago. The river was placid, slowly moving at an undetectable pace. I set down my book and sat on the rock, resting back on my elbows. This was around 6:30.

At first I could only see the effects of the lightning. Clouds suddenly illuminated and defined in a sky that I would have supposed to just be a wall of never ending gray stretched across the world. But add lightning and it's as if bursts of daylight briefly intercept the night. Suddenly the open expanse of muted silver is actually a field of stratified cumulonimbus mingling in the troposphere. 

After around fifteen minutes or so, though I cannot say I kept track of time well, branches of lightning stretched out from the clouds into the sky. As I gazed around at the river I wondered if fish could ever see lightning storms and what they thought of it. A few moments later, the dorsal of a particularly large fish glided through the water for around three feet and resubmerged back into the river. I speculated about the amount of toxins in the fish's body, as the Androscoggin once was a heavily polluted river and is still healing from the days of immense Mill pollution. 

I cannot pinpoint when the thunder of the storm became audible, but when it did, it was noticeable. The storm began ramping up quickly. Bursts of light became more frequent and visible. The sound of thunder rumbled with force and longevity, as if God himself was pushing around heavy furniture on the hardwood floors of Heaven because his feng shui consultant said the chi was "all wrong in here".

At around 8:15 the lightning was almost above the river. In an instant the entire mood of my surroundings changed. Suddenly the eerily calm environment disappeared and I was hit with a forceful wind, warm and chaotic, rallying the trees and rippling the river. Cold, fat droplets of water splashed and plopped down. All I could hear was the white static noise of thrashing leaves and the rolling thunder that was commanding awe more urgently than ever with it's voice. The lightning was above the river, spreading out against the night sky like a neural pathway. As I sat on the rock, clutching my jacket, taking in all the elements of the storm, feeling nature as it demanded to be felt, I understood why so many cultures had invented gods who lived and fought in the sky. I felt something. I can't name what I felt, but it brought wild laughter bubbling to my lips.

I swiftly plucked my things from the rock, hid my book under my raincoat, and stumbled back up onto the cemetery trail. The rain pelted me as the wind blew harder, trying to catch up with me.  I howled with the wind, roared with the wind, shrieked with the wind. I laughed with the wind.

 As I got closer to the gate of the cemetery the wind and rain died down. The lightning storm had moved downstream. However, I wasn't quite done enjoying the light show, so I layed on a hill that faced the storm as it continued to rave in the sky with only yellow glow sticks. At 8:45 I left the graveyard and headed home.

 Before I reached my house I heard Barbara talking from the second story window in Pierce where she lived. I went up to her room and tried to explain to her about the best 2 hour date I had ever had with myself but she just looked at me with concern, telling me that being so near a body of water in a lightning storm is dangerous.

Well, of course. That's what makes it so exhilarating.

Photo Credit: Mike Bradley 

Okay so that was my story of the best moment so far this semester. That night I also went on an adventure to a supermarket in the storm with friends and stayed up too late chilling with wonderful humans. I'm going to show you some photos of my house now.

       

 

So that's where I live. Wait, one sec.
Okay, sorry, I was downloading iOS 7 on my iphone.
I'm taking classes this semester. 4 of them. One of them involves community outreach and developing a community space out of a Mill that is 650,000 square feet large. So that's happening. Also, my housemates (there are 2 of them, Cat and Grace) and wonderful and we're really cool. Here is a picture of us last weekend dressed up for the Bates 80s dance:

Also, here is a picture of me and a few of my friend at a crazy potluck party raging super hard:

Things are good. I'm writing songs and poetry and spending time with good people and debating more and I'm in a Bollywood dance class and I'm pretty good at it. Alright, I have work to do. I promise I'll post every Wednesday now.