Driven crazy

I'd never seen a daytime sky so black. Looking out from my classroom window a few minutes after nine this morning, I could see only some murky street lights down below; otherwise nothing. In fact, the sky like a thick coal ash slurry was present right outside the glass; no farther away than that. Soon, a furious pelting of water, drops coalescing into parallel streams of water that flowed aslant the pane in one direction, then suddenly in another. Thunder rumbled, lightning flashed. It seemed that we, well lit and dry inside, were looking through the window pane into the maw of a monster attempting to devour us. Later, we learned the storm spawned a tornado that ripped up Revere.

Scifi novelists have imagined worlds with multiple suns, decades-long seasons, and other planetary and climate alternatives, notions fun to entertain, but today our world suddenly, actually, gave u a second night which was not an eclipse. You, air, transparent, yielding, are tameable in tires and pneumatic tools, but teamed up with water, a veritable hoodlum.

It's easy to forget, not just the potential for violence of the universe, but of this earth. Roiling magmas in the mantle spurt out through weakness in the crust; faults shifting make the earth ring like a bell; ocean surges wash away islands and beaches; ice rivers scoop out valleys and sharpen peaks; winds move provinces worth of loess; storms ignite forests which create storms of fire; rivers inundate, winds strip and break. How many more things can happen? Perhaps we've not gone through the whole repertoire. Maybe new pieces are in rehearsal now.

However wild you are, my planet, you don't hold a candle to us human beings. You may drive us to shelters for hours, but bombardments can last for days. You may kill a few, but massacres all. You may devastate the land for a time, but sterilizations permanently. Your may let some escape; genocides relentlessly hunt down all to the very least child. You incidentally cause suffering; torture deliberately maximizes it. The dark imaginings of the human heart can make today's second night seem like day.

I like you better sometimes. You're sincere; you relent; you give us as much to admire as to fear; you are not vengeful; you are generous. But is what we're doing driving you to extreme behaviors? Are we provoking you into becoming something like ourselves?

As if Prospero had gestured, the blackness lightened and dissipated. The sky cleared, even showing blue between the cumulus clouds. Later sun shone on the river, and into my room. The morning became memory.

This evening, the setting sun beautifully backlit some towering cloud banks, and suddenly there was a short, stiff shower. You're not done surprising us.