This Tormented Hiatus

We've had very tumultuous weather lately. Could it really just be a coincidence, going along with the indisputable fact that the season of Spring is known for many thunderstorms and rain? Or could it be that somehow the weather is related to me personally, something to do with my hiatus? Like it's time for me to be tormented.

I'm remembering that night I stood in the thunder and pouring rain and demanded that I be struck by lightning if I had done wrong, and all those houses were lost in the lightning fires. I thought that was a very good sign for me, clearing me of guilt. But now we're getting the intensity again, the thunder crashing down, and I'm hoping it doesn't mean my case has come up for review. And that my feeling of innocence isn't all it takes to pronounce actual guilt.

I tend to look at thunder and lightning as scientific facts, not instruments of judgment. Grandpa used to tell me the thunder was just potatoes rolling down the cellar stairs but I don't believe that anymore. There's more science to it, something about the air pressure building up to a point where the dew point is exceeded, then an electrical chain reaction makes contact -- between the polarities -- in the sky and earth. They meet in a loud crash somewhere in the middle, with the lightning going both up and down simultaneously. What comes back to earth affects us here, but what advances up in the sky shakes loose the rain, and so the weather gets worse. But what compels all of it? Is there a meta-science behind the science? That would be my question.

Why would I be judged for simply going on hiatus? It doesn't make a lot of sense. But the nature of transgression isn't always a thing of sense. It's also a thing of instinct and of just knowing. The chill up the spine. Your hair standing on end when the holy is in evidence. Science can't put these under a microscope and take a biopsy. You know what you know by leaps and bounds, tumultuous shifts in consciousness.

It could be that getting hit by lightning would be the best thing that ever happened to me. I take a hiatus. I perceive that judgment will come. Instead there's affirmation, in the form of being struck by lightning. Then after I'm struck, I become like lightning, like a super power. I'm able to jump into the sky and ride with the wind to a destination. At the destination, I crash down to earth. Everyone just thinks it's lightning. But I'm back behind a billboard taking off my charred clothes and putting on fresh. Then I walk into town and teach the people the lessons of life. Then I see the daughter of the guy who runs the hardware store. We hit it off and are holding hands in back of the grange. The father sees me, chases me into the country. I clap my hands, become a bolt of lightning, and I'm off to my next adventure.

Judgment's a funny thing. When you feel like you deserve it, you're fine. But when you feel innocent, that's a dangerous scene; that's when you're likely to be struck. I took this hiatus. I enjoyed myself. But now it could happen. I might be in for torments I can't even imagine.