shewholaughs

I timed my late lunch to coincide with the darkening skies and sat outside under an overhang cradling McChesney's The Political Economy of Media. In the grip of a fast-marching squall line, I didn't read a page. It's always the same: as the menacing black clouds stretch across the city, each newly extinguished block falls strangely silent. The buzz of a weed whacker chokes and quiets. The lunch crowd hushes in their conversations, their gazes sneaking upward. Lights wake up behind the windows of no-longer-daylit cafes and office buildings. Before the thunder and rain, the air always stands still, the wind saving its breath. We feel for a minute or two that we are living just beneath the dumb sweeps of a searchlight. And then the beam locates us. The flags fight their tethers noisily, grommets clanging, fabric snapping angrily, an angry rain lashes out, and time speeds up again. Reverent in their silence and stillness seconds ago, the people reanimate and dash for cover. The driver of an overlarge SUV leans on his horn, startling a cautious motorist hovering at the intersection of King and Main. A moment ago, as we all waited for the first blows to fall, I wouldn't have judged this man for his unforunate taste in bumperstickers but the moment the storms strikes up, life resumes, and I cheerfully begrudge him his early support for Palin 2012.