Darkness & Lightning

It smells of youth, mischief, sweat, and sex outside. Lightning flashes in all directions but the south, gathering or rallying in great sonorous blasts, like long brass trumpets. Yesterday the winds were such that the smell of shit came in and, though it hasn't exactly vanished, has dissipated or been outperformed by new competitors. Friends of ne'er-do-well neighbors have parked poorly by the corner, tempting each turning vehicle to leave its mark on a bumper or rear, driver's side door.

Something about tonight--rumbling thunder, pungent odors, nigh oppressive humidity, the shear electricity--rings inarguably of power, sexuality, beastliness. It feels like a night for monsters and demons, for an assault on the senses, on bodies. Competitive sports, especially brutal ones, come to mind. The personal aroma of labor, heat, and humidity bring together a private involvement, an intermixing of skin and light and noise. I have felt displaced, uncoordinated all day; distractions and discouragement mounting about every other corner. Now, though, I perceive some stronger urge; not necessarily my own, but one undeniably present.

Oddly, I cannot escape the sensuality of thunderstorms, of the blend of fear, excitement, suspense, proximity of darkness interspersed with flashes of light, blasts of guttural sound. The heavy, heady air has its own intoxicating qualities, its power to subdue and suggest. Everything about tonight carries some promise or threat just beyond the glare of houselights and streetlamps, outside the limit of what you expect to see and what you want to see.

The night smacks of the macabre and of the primeval; of mischief for no other sake than the Bacchic spirits demand it. Tonight would be a night for painful satisfaction, for bitemarks and the smell if not the taste of iron. Proximity, privacy, sensuality all come with their double-edge, their expectations or aspirations of trust but the threat of damage, harm, decay, abandon. Abandon not just in the sense of loss, but in the sense of disregard to oneself, to expectations, to inhibitions and guidance. The moon is waxing tonight, half decayed from its full, but something has all of its potency.

Horror stories and fantastic fiction come to mind, the pressures and drives of the environment on places and people. Mages and mystics refer to ley lines that crisscross the Earth, marking highways of psychic or earthen or celestial power. Soils or caverns become blessed or cursed, therefore tainting the residents and landscape above. Millions gather in Varanasi, India to cleanse away sins, make offerings, of spread ashes at the northern turning of the Ganges where the Goddess-turned-river flows back toward heaven. Lovecraft chronicles the falling of a meteorite and its spectacular transformation of the land and its farming family in "The Colour Out of Space." Being Human suggests that part of the lycanthropic cycle is based on atmospheric pressure due to lunar gravity. Temples are founded on sacred ground, cities built on sanctified stones, children conceived within blessed circles, all in order to curry some favor or transform the future with some supernatural entity. (I do not casually group the Hindu religion or serious mages and witches with TV paranormal drama and weird fiction, only mean to express a great range of the recurring paranormal realities present in each.)

To view these episodes, places, people as out-dated or quaint misses the reality that is suffused with spirit, energy, supernormal potency. All faiths, cultures, even personal histories are suffused with mystery. Sometimes mystery takes the form of illusion, fraud, and mischief, but I think its manifestation as miracle, magic, and the inexplicably weird is distinct. Something about the night, its sureness, its immediate presence carries with it that peculiar intensity. In a way, it is the energy of a storm, of an especial night, but I also see it, feel it as something else.