In Pursuit of Slow Things: Changing Skies

Hovering heavy and low, the clouds come.  Pressure mounts, sticking clothing to chests.  The sky comes down on you like a duvet.  Then, I can feel it on my brow: the slight dampness of sweat.  The air is thick, the temperature rising.  Overhead the sun’s brightness is swallowed up by foreboding grey. 

It’s coming.

Then it begins: the resounding clap and sizzling of clouds.  Their presence commands rapt attention.  Hands cup ears, little feet run to shelter, the wind rustles the trees in an unmistakable gust of forewarning.

You hear it on the tin roofs before you see it.  A wall of water, sweeping across the road and you see it coming after you.  It does not drizzle, it does not tarry, it does not drip: it roars.  Within minutes dry land is flooded with charging mud.  Within minutes ditches are filled to overflowing, hair is sopping, and all the insects are silenced.  Their song will rise again even louder but for now, they are speechless as they witness the chorus of the heavens.

The rain bursts forth like a fountain from a faucet opened wide, and all nature becomes its captive audience.  Vendors stop vending, walkers stop walking, piles of bananas are covered in cardboard, and the hustle and bustle of frantic roads fill quietly with unending mud.  Necks craned, eyes upwards, sweaters clutched, feet soaked.

The changing skies of this land, in this season, make me dance.  I like the storms that rip across the skies, the instant change from hot to cool.  I like the banging heavens, the living clouds, the pounding water that is here one moment and gone the next.

It feels productive and energetic.  It feels like the beginning of a show, the opening of a new book, the birth of a new life, with all its curtain opening glory.

Changing skies means changing seasons, possibility, newness and energy.

But skies that stay the same, I have a problem with.  Like the grey that remains for weeks, for months, on the west coast of Canada, unending drizzle lulls me into a place of weariness, and a feeling of suffocation. 

It’s the slow drizzle I have a problem with.  It’s the unending burning sun I cannot handle.  Same, same chimodzi-modzi.  The drip, drip of regular life.  Or the beating down sun of hot season here, the radiating heat of the rigorous routines of life that fuel boredom and confusion. 

But more of life is the drizzle.  More of life is the same.  Slowly changing, slowing growing, slowly aging, slowly developing, slowly dreaming, slow things.  It is not lost on me that my lack of appreciation of the slow things causes me to welcome discontent too often.  I am well aware that my itching feet and restless nature cause me to always look for changing skies instead of getting to the work of living underneath the grey ones or the continuously hot ones.

There is beauty in the slow things.  There is meaning in the small changes.  There is significance in the never-ending grey wispy fog just as much as the clamoring clouds.  Each become more precious in light of the other.  Each become more satisfying.

Roll onwards, clouds.  Creep slowly, seasons.  I will behold and bear witness and learn to sit under your shadow and live and love all the same.