Setting-sun-shower
It was evening. Cloudy, humid, and hot. I was sitting on the couch watching Law & Order, wondering how many dust mites my sticky skin was picking up, when I looked outside and saw a bright streak of golden orange light against my neighbor’s garage.
Then I heard thunder. And then I heard rain.
It was storming and sunsetting all at the same time. A sun-shower, as these things are known, is a rare thing it is true. But a setting-sun-shower is unheard of. By which I mean it is even more rare.
So, I felt a strong urge to look at it. Since my couch looks out an east-facing window, I headed to the front porch, which faces west. My house is atop a fairly big hill, and on a good day the western view is pretty good: Minneapolis, trees, Minneapolis, sun, clouds.
But when I got to the porch I realized this was not a good day at all, but a very very good day that was amazing. The rain was coming down gently, with occasional thunderclaps. Directly above me were clouds, moving and swirling fast. But further west the skies were clear; a piercing blue tinted with pink and orange. The result was a general glow that made everything beautiful to look at.
I started with the plants and trees. Their greens were deeper, their browns softer. Then I looked at the houses, they looked beautiful too. The cars. The street. The sidewalk. My shirt, my arms, my skin.
I decided that moment that the important thing was to invent a light bulb that could produce light like this. This should be the goal of humanity, I thought.
By this point I was standing just outside the screen door, under the eave, where it was dry. Then, without warning, my arms lifted up and stretched out into the rain. I don’t know why they did this, but it felt amazing. My immediate response was to break into a huge smile and look up at the little drops.
My subsequent response – again, I can’t explain it – was to step out from under the overhang. There, I realized, there was nothing between me and the falling drops except a few thin tree branches, and those dripped water, too.
I stood that way for a moment, kind of spinning slowly and looking up. Then, with every logical brain cell telling me not to, I took off my shirt and shoes.
It was now raining much harder, in crisp, cold sheets. Semi-clothed, I wandered down the front steps to the street. Bare feet on wet concrete; that feeling you took for granted as a kid. Why wouldn’t you? A ten-year-old can take his clothes off and go play in the rain any time he wants.
A 22-year-old can too, actually. We just don’t remember it.
After a few steps in the pounding rain, I must have started acting completely on instinct, because I broke into a sprint. Top speed, no direction. Just a bursting feeling in my lungs like I wanted to yell.
So I did.
And that’s how I got to the end of my block; a little dazed and breathing hard. At the intersection the cross-street shoots steeply downhill, and there’s a clear view to the west. I glided, sort of, over to a grassy slope behind some buildings and crumpled to the ground to watch the storm clouds light up from behind.
The next twenty minutes were, without a doubt, the best answer to the question “What am I doing here?” that I have ever witnessed. I would try to describe it better, but I’d just be ruining it for myself, and for you. If you’ve been alive long enough and you’re lucky, you know what it (the answer to the question) looks like.
Although I really had no desire to leave, after a while I just moved along, floating off like a leaf freed from an eddy. At no point had my plan been to strip my clothes off and go running in the rain like a ten-year-old. It was just something that developed; a summation of small impulsive acts. Proof that you don’t need to know where you’re going to be going somewhere good. All you need is to let yourself go.
As I walked back up the hill toward my street, I saw a large man coming my way. He was wearing very high socks, like lederhosen, and suspenders. He was middle-aged, with a graying beard.
There it was, nine o’clock in the evening, raining, and I was walking around shoeless, shirtless, and soaked. And grinning like a fool. “I must look like a crazy person to him,” I thought.
I got more self-conscious as he got closer. I kept looking down at the sidewalk, hoping to avoid eye contact. But I glanced up at just the wrong moment.
“Hi,” I said.
“Good evening,” he replied in a strange laughing tone of voice. I knew it! I did look crazy to him.
But as he passed, something dawned on me: there was no reason to feel uncomfortable. There’s room in this world for all sorts of people. The sunsets don’t discriminate. Plus, he was the one wearing lederhosen.
The orange light was quickly fading to gray now, under the huge dark cloud that had gathered in the east. But from the west a weak breeze of violet light gave one last sighing breath. I filled my lungs, turned up the block and started slowly walking home.