hey, ho, the wind and the rain

it's the most spontaneous thing i've written in a year! love, apoorva


I feel the beginnings of the familiar rush, and step out into the breeze. A drop falls on my nose. My notebook is in my hands, the one with Shakespeare's face on the cover, and the intimidating pen clenched in my fist, looking at me defiantly. Something stirs in me. Maybe it's the pen. Maybe it's the crescendo of the storm. And so I try. Hey, ho, the wind and the rain, I hear.

I can't even begin to describe the high a storm gives me. I'm sitting on the balcony, the wind singing in my ears. For once, my hair falls loose around my face. I feel each gust kissing me, making my heart race, enticing...flowing into the next, pulling the rain out of the clouds, slowly, like a deliciously pleasurable drumroll.
People around me bundle up against the howling wind, the storm. They close their windows and pull on jumpers, curl up under the covers. I stay up here, outside, and leave as much of myself uncovered as possible for nature to touch. Some people get high on drugs. I get high on the smell of wind, the taste of rain, the sight of branches wrestling and getting tangled up like my hair, a blur of green, the sound of the whispers and roars. I like to guess the moods of the god of the skies. I like to talk to him, listen to him.
It's sin; terribly beautiful. Kisses drip down my face and neck. The good people are indoors, denying themselves the drunken, shameful pleasure. I am out here, free and incandescent and unapologetic, shoplifting, stealing from nature something I could never give back. Exciting my senses, getting them drunk. It's completely for free, and I can't afford it; I don't have enough guilt. It's a crime to feel such wild joy and satisfaction. To feel so undeprived. It's a crime to experience something impossible.
The skies stimulate my senses, my emotions, my mind. I have an instinctive lust for them. For that satisfaction. Maybe I feel like I'm special to the skies somehow. To the god of the skies. Like I'm his soul daughter, though he doesn't know it.

People pray differently. I pray up here, in the skies, among its songs. Sitting up high amidst the storm, I shiver. It is here where I can reach anything with my mind and my soul. Here where I feel obligated not to lose faith, however tempting it may be. Here where I am reminded of what is important; where I can continue to discover myself in the presence of my god - nature. The skies are beautiful to me; they provide the world with beauty. In my heart, I believe this. When I pray, I pray for the courage to feel it too. To feel this beauty, and to create some of my own. The god of the skies provides me with a connection with myself, giving me tantalizing tastes of his summer storms and allowing me to use these tastes - experiences in themselves - as I will, in my art and in my life. An addict needs inspiration and a high. The skies give me both.

Other sounds and sights slowly come back into focus. The spell fades; the magic is gone. It will come back, but for now it has left me hungover, my heart and mind racing, to ponder the strangest things I have recently discovered about myself. The storm is gone, but the lust will never fade.
I shiver. Quietly, without guilt, I gather up my straying thoughts, reeling them in, and stagger back inside, still smiling, feeling the remains of the ecstasy in my soul.