David Whyte, and Storms...........

All this petty worry

while the great cloak

of the sky grows dark

and intense

round every living thing.

What is precious

inside us does not

care to be known

by the mind

in ways that diminish

its presence.

David Whyte 

Already too many years ago I went to visit a friend who was living in Puerto Rico. Unfortunately, in that humid climate I developed  asthma, probably from mold,  and couldn't stay in her home, but had to stay in a hotel in order to visit her.  There, in a mostly deserted resort hotel by the ocean I encountered a Tropical Storm.   Today, for some reason, I'm again remembering that friend, Felicia, and that day of the Storm I met in Puerto Rico.  

My life in Tucson is mostly placid, that is, except for Monsoon Season, when the great (and beloved)  Monsoon clouds come rolling in, announcing themselves with thunder, lightning, and a downpour that swiftly comes and goes, leaving a refreshed and cooled desert. 

But the Tropics.  The tropics, it seems to me, are where life  is at its most vibrant, virulent, creative, predatory, colorful, and destructive. Life in the tropics teems.   It's impossible to be in the midst of that potency of life and not become intoxicated with it. Intoxicated or terrified, take your choice. In retrospect, experiences can be viewed as  kind of like meals. How did they TASTE? Did they fill, is the fragrance still with you?  Were they spicy, sweet,  or bitter, making one slow, dull, digestive?  The fragrance of Puerto Rico, like the taste of Bali, will always still be with me. 

                                    "The world is not with us enough - oh taste and see" 

The poet Denise Levertov wrote, and it's too often true.  How often do we stop, in the midst of this Feast of life, to really "taste and see"? 

On the Day of the Storm, I remember I had a room with a balcony at the top of a hotel  in Rincon. I arrived  off season, and it was already largely deserted, and especially with the prospect of a tropical storm advancing.  I  felt like a character from Stephen King’s “The Shining”, with a whole hotel to myself at night, empty bars filled with the ghosts of bands and booze and laughter and sex.  An empty blue pool with palm frond chairs upturned.  And wind, wind, wind moving leaves of palm trees,  the wet, heavy tropical air, wind blowing over wicker tables. 

As the sun went down, the storm advanced across the dark ocean, and the lights went out.  There were no candles, or even an attendant to ask about candles.  Just me on the second floor, looking out at the vastness of an endarkened ocean. 

So, there I sat in the state of Storm, with nothing to do but witness.

I do not think I shall ever forget that intense heavy silence, or the sounds of the koki frogs.  A woman called for her dog in Spanish,  “Limon, Limon!” as I watched the sudden illumination of lightning as it revealed an advancing mass of  clouds, rolling in from the distant ocean.  I was awed by the truth of that moment, our lives, our plans, our hopes and imaginations of "what is" - existing in the brief moments between  storms.

 

 

I know that sometimes

your body is hard like a stone

on a path that storms break over,

embedded deeply

into that something that you think is you,

and you will not move

while the voice all around

tears the air

and fills the sky with jagged light.

But sometimes unawares

those sounds seem to descend

as if kneeling down into you

and you listen strangely caught

as the terrible voice

moving closer

halts,

and in the silence

now arriving

whispers

Get up, I depend on you utterly.

Everything you need

you had 

the moment before

you were born.

~ David Whyte ~

(Where Many Rivers Meet)