Have you seen lightning literally "run" across the sky?- A Storm Hits During Dinner

Courtesy of akhater from deviantart from http://akhater.deviantart.com/art/Thunderstorm-over-Beirut-101982150

When I returned home, and we sat down for a comfy family dinner, I felt a great gust of wind whipping the leaves about on a tree in back of our house. At that moment, dinner abandoned, I raced outside and danced in the grass. I felt the immense power of the wind, calling me, playing with me. One moment it would be deadly still, save the scurrying movement of the clouds and the eerie silence of all the animals and creatures holding their breath, then in the next, in one swift moment, the wind flipped your hair over and ticked your sides. I lay on the grass and watched the sky transforming. And when you felt the first drops of rain, you know the sky’s about to break. One fell right into my eyes and that’s when I decided it wasn’t too fun to stare straight up at the open sky. 

Drop by drop, momentum gathers, and a sudden wash as if there was a dam, and its barricade had dissolved. Like a giant wave or perhaps flood is a more accurate description, the rain pounds down on the ground, on the tops of our car, water to metal, playing a very metallic drum. All of a sudden, the world turns dark. What was once the delicate smooth edges of pan-fried shrimp, was not a lumpy dark mass sitting in even more impenetrable darkness. The darkness, you could feel it. The place where I live is not out in the woods, but I have experienced that darkness too. Deep in the woods, with trees all around, and even with a clearing, when clouds are covering the moon, you could not hope to walk a few feet ahead without completely losing sense of direction, or certainty. You must let all of that go, and surrender, for if you try to hold on to it for long, you will certainly be driven mad. 

Only when you let go, can you find freedom and peace. Surrender to the power of nature. Gasp, I see a brave little plane rising higher with its blinking lights. How close it comes to the lightning. What brave people, or perhaps foolish people would be on that plane. I wish for the best. Nature is not to be a force to be reckoned with. Sit back in awe is the best way to experience it. And the rumbling thunders, a deep bass, deeper than any sound I’ve heard. The vibrations travel through the ground, and I feel it shake my bones in the hollow o my heart. It flips around my stomach and the sound gets so low, so that describing it with ears is insufficient. It must be felt by the sensations in your body. Going up and down from the tips of the head to your wiggling toes.

As the lightening strikes in the sky not too far away, a hue of purple paints the sky instantaneously, and then disappears to a mellow light orange caused by the setting sun. And suddenly as my eyes are fixed on the sky, it finally decides to put on a little show. Three lines of lightning, starting from the north almost dances, no sprints across the sky. I guess that’s where people get the term “lightning fast” from. That is the first moment in my life that I’ve seen lighting race across the sky. AND AGAIN.!!! Though it seemed like perhaps its movements weren’t random. It looked like it’s entire path was already determined, and the light traveled along that given path in a blink of an eye. Before today, I’ve only seen stationary lightening. What a gift. The rain is very light now, not like the heavy downpour a few minutes ago. Other lightning light up the entire sky, and for a second, I saw color again. Instead of all brown and black, I see a flash of green of the grass and trees.

Interesting how I haven’t been bitten by a mosquito…well, I shouldn’t curse my luck.