A Thunderstorm In Brooklyn

Matt warned me that a storm was coming. I didn’t think much of it, mostly forgetting about thunderstorms and how dark and grey the clouds had been for the whole bus ride. I couldn’t focus on much of anything on the bus. I meant to finish some work while I was heading from Providence to New York City but the combination of the driver’s dramatic lane changes and stops paired with a seat that swung around like a piece of a pinball machine, I instead had to close my eyes and fight off the car sickness. Eventually, when the bus pulled into Port Authority, all I could feel was a great sense of relief. I could get outside. Though I was walking into the dense humid heat and the strange maze that is Port Authority Bus Terminal, the unknown stenches and thick air were more than welcome. I headed for the subway, texting Shana, who I was meeting for dinner with Matt. As I said, I already forgot Matt’s warning.

When I lived in Providence, Shana came to visit Matt and I. It was summer and the swollen hot heat of the East Coast was already brimming, too much for me and my love of the arid California heat. As Shana arrived at our house, the rain started to dump harder than it already had been, exploding quickly into thunder. Matt and I had been exploring the wood near our house and water to see the streams at the time, seeing how quickly they might overflow and flood with water. We asked if Shana wanted to go to the stream in the rain. Smiling curiously, already wet from her walk out of the car into the house, she said sure. We got some clothes on that would be easier to dry and ran out in the storm, down the street toward the Seekonk River, up the pond to the spillway. The water was already gushing over the top in a kind of fury. All I remember, drenched in rain, was my astonishment seeing so much water coming down so quickly.

In New York I met up with Shana near her work on the other side of Prospect Park from Matt. She was easy to spot, with an umbrella for the light rain that just began, her backpack, new orange glasses, and a tote full of t-shirts, an ordinary sight of her. Shana is a hard worker and someone that rarely, from the outside, has a spare lazy moment. Shana is the kind of person that emphatically and gladly says yes to most anything, even when she may not be able to make it work easily. And so, very often, you’ll see her around, hands full.

The plan was to walk through Prospect Park to the restaurant to meet Matt. We turned a corner to go into a bodega and grab a drink and an umbrella. Just as I punched the umbrella the lighting began to hit, cracking through the street so loud it must have been striking only a few blocks away.

We stared at the downpour from the overhang, in awe of the thunder and shocked at the how quickly the rain came down, laughing at the lighting strikes, smiling with the other people left stranded here in this brief moment by the rains. Deciding that the rain won’t let up and we might as well just run over to the subway two blocks away, I remember us, in Providence, nearly seven years ago, staring down at the swollen stream, in awe of the currents and of the weather.

As Shana and I made our way to the restaurant, we got soaked, but not too bad. It wasn’t cold rain so it wasn’t so frustrating. It was just a fun moment, one of many on the east coast, where the stupefying heat of summer turns into a torrent, and thunder cracks. It felt almost like a return, not just to Providence, but to another possibility or prospect, even, of a life I could have lived here, enjoying small adventures like this with the people I seldom see in this giant chaotic fun mess of a city that is New York.

Sitting at home today in Oakland, the clouds are brushing in and out of the day, and the sounds of the jets above meet the speeding cars on 15th street. The days are cool, refreshing, but hardly feel close to what most summers feel like out here. We’ll have to wait for those heatwaves in October, when the East Bay, momentarily turns to summer and we can pretend, for one or two brief weeks, that maybe summer did happen this year.

Buy Me A Coffee :)

This is very late notice but if you’re free tonight come to Et Al Gallery in San Francisco for the release of San Francisco Review of Whatever’s second volume. I have a little profile about the Sonoma exhibition space Escolar. It starts at 6pm. But check out their website to find where you can buy a copy. They’ve already published some amazing writing in there!

ALSO! Go check out Bay Area Current Magazine! My sister and I are doing a short “Get to Know the Locals” column about the native species in the area. Her drawings are awesome. The magazine has been doing some amazing reporting too! Check it out, there’s a lot of interesting stuff on there already.