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Pixellent
So there I was, very early this morning, at 5:00 am, lying
in bed not sleeping. My sleeping tends to be erratic at the best of times,
but recently full, restful nights tend to be few and far between. (This doesn't
make me especially unique anymore. Onward: )
My fellow New Yorkers know that, very early this morning
-- just around 5:00 am, as it happens -- we were treated to a thunderstorm
of uncommon force and activity. "The devil's beating his wife" was a common
expression in the American South some seventy years ago to describe a
particularly heavy thunderstorm, and it applies here.
I took very little notice of the storm at first -- merely
the soft sussurrus of rain, noticed unconsciously if at all -- until the
first thunderclap hit. It sounded like no thunderclap I have ever heard.
It sounded big, and it sounded loud, and it sounded
close, and there was an extended bass rumble to it that seemed to
last longer than any normal clap of thunder ought to.
I did not at first recognize it as thunder, that sound.
What I thought I was hearing was the sound of something
very big, exploding in the dark morning sky.
Of course I rushed to the window, trying to see something
in the darkness and the rain. I don't know what I was expecting -- perhaps
the residual glow of fireball dying across the river from me, perhaps marking
the death throes of the Empire State Building. But I saw nothing, and all
I heard was the rain.
And then the second thunderclap came. And it sounded like
nothing more than thunder. I was back on my feet; I was on familiar ground;
my heart could stop hammering in my chest.
And I went back to bed -- finally, truly, in that place
where truths come to rest -- living in the frightening new world in which
we all dwell.
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