Tuesday, May 21, 2002 |
09:48 - Sunshowers
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I wish my camera were not down in Torrance getting repaired.
Two evenings ago, I was so distracted by the huge multicolored clouds gathering at sunset that I spent no less than an hour leaning out my window, staring out across the valley, unable to bring myself to sit at my computer and do e-mail and talk to friends. The clouds were jagged, broken, and heavy-- very weird for late May around here. The air smelled like vegetation, and there wasn't an insect to be seen or heard. All I saw were neighborhood cats sniffing around the tires of my car, then moving on down the street and tripping the motion-sensor lights in people's driveways.
Then, yesterday, we had an unseasonable storm. It rained all day. But it wasn't the heavy, sullen rain that we usually get; instead, it was all sunshowers, as Chris put it-- off-and-on flurries of sometimes intense rain, back-lit by patches of sunlight that lit up the trees and glinted off each individual raindrop. Every region of the sky was a different color; some places were thick with ready-to-fall rain, some were illuminated pinkish-gold, some were clear blue. At any given time during the day, we could look out the plate-glass window that covered what was once our loading dock, facing westward toward the Cupertino mountains, and see the greens on the trees and the colors of the parked cars more vividly than during any clear and sunny day. As the sun started setting, the rich light streamed into the lab area, fighting its way through the clouds that still kept trying to throw streamers over it.
On the drive home, the sun was lighting up the jagged edges of the weirdly westward-moving cloud shreds over the western side of the valley; but as I came through downtown San Jose, and just as I passed the downtown buildings with their deep blue and silver and gold reflective surfaces (and the repeated Kiki's Delivery Service line in my head: "I sure do love this city"), we hit first a veil and then a torrent of water. All of eastern San Jose was still staggering under a different front of the attacker. We felt it all night-- and I heard, also, that across the mountains, in the exotic otherworldly regions of Sacramento (which as far as we're concerned may as well be on another continent), tornadoes and hail were forcing the populace to dive for cover.
This morning, the colors across the street are fading and brightening, and the air is drenched-- like it's going to start shaking itself off like a dog. The storm seems to be largely over. The clouds have turned fluffy, though they're still jammed together.
And when the air is this freshly washed, the views are spectacular.
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