Thunder, Adrenaline, and Clichés

Yesterday I was in the parking garage when a tremendous thunderclap hit, and it was so astoundingly loud and seemed so close that I went instinctively into a semi-crouch, thinking for a microsecond that the whole garage was coming down on top of me. When that didn’t happen, I felt better—a whole lot better. I can’t say I had a skip in my step, since I was scurrying along under an umbrella trying not to get soaked, but my adrenaline rush did transform into something like a mini-burst of euphoria keyed to the tune “I’m alive!” When I got to the class I’m teaching these days, I chose to start off with a “totally free writing” exercise rather than the “directed free writing” I had been planning. The freedom may not have been quite total, but it did feel awfully good--and it was suddenly very clear to me, as I was writing, why passionate love affairs and thunderstorms have to go together in the movies (or at least, in old movies). The sky is the heart, and when one opens up, so does the other (I’m sure I could find some mythology to back me up on this). The cliché had been unexpectedly redeemed by a quickened pulse.