Life in Capital Letters

The lightning strikes so fast and frequently, the rolls of thunder sound like peals of deep, sad laughter, echoing through the streets as though they were canyons. The streets fill with water (alas, life below sea level) and cars stall in deep puddles.

I have vivid associations with weather, it’s like I catalog all of the places I’ve been and feelings I’ve felt and important moments in my life all by the weather.
I remember meeting my first real love when summer was fading into fall. The sky was beginning to turn that pale shade of blue when I first realized that I was attracted to him (it’s so real in my memory, I can remember the feeling of blood in my cheeks and my heart pounding as we kissed through a sheet on his couch) - Amber light coated the world like thick honey in the day, and a deep yellow harvest moon hung like a watchful eye when we went to the fair.
I began to love him as the weather turned cold, wearing a jacket in his house, feeling my fingers and toes tingle in the hot showers we would take and at night pushing my body as close to his as I could.
And everything felt so right as time slowed, in those moments when I realized that he was changing my perception - my life. I think about this from time to time, though I’ve never told him how much he changed the path of my life, I sometimes wish that I could make him feel that way, the way he made me feel - alive, free, changed. He probably doesn’t feel that way very often: it takes a very remarkable person to influence another remarkable person. It also takes a very open person to be influenced - and I think he’s closed himself to many things in life. But come to think of it, I wish I could feel transformed again too.. I haven’t met any influential individuals in a long while, though I have seen things that have changed me - like the mosques and ancient walls of Istanbul ringing with the call to prayer, like the sun setting over the Baltic Sea, like exchanging smiles with strangers who remind you that you’re human, and that to be human is a good thing.

When I met K - my second love, it was late spring. During the day the breeze was tantalizingly warm, but the nights were still cool. I remember driving to see him on the weekends when I wasn’t working, driving through green fields and early summer storms. I remember the smell of the rain, the mist filling the spaces between the pine trees that lined the highway as night fell, my car filled with moonlight and music. When the heat came and the drought set in and the grass turned brown, we drove to the lake and jumped in in our clothes. We only saw each other every other weekend, so when we were together we made love as much as we could. Sometimes afterwards we’d go stand naked on the back porch in the deep summer heat, which was thrumming with the sound of cicadas, to smoke cigarettes and stand in happy silence.
We were really happy. The dry summer turned into a crisp fall, and we’d leave the windows open to the chilly night air. We woke up late on the weekends with the comforter pulled up to our chins, and weak fall sunlight streaming in the window. I held on to those moments for as long as I could. I tried to keep them safe, to appreciate them twice as much because he didn’t seem to appreciate them at all. Life to him was a movie to be passively watched and enjoyed, perhaps even considered and discussed - but not to be directed and acted and MADE. I wanted so badly to share this lucid dream with him. Now I realize that this is selfish and impossible anyway, to have someone who is just like you so that you will feel safe, so you can share everything. I’ve wasted so much time on this endeavor, on trying to find myself in others or, worse, to clone myself so that I could be understood.. but the desire, the compulsion I have (I’ve said need, but is it really?) to be understood never goes away, it’s always there. It taints my intentions and this makes me angry.

My other great loves - the places I’ve traveled to and fallen in love with - I can also remember by the temperature and the quality of light and rain and the feel of night air. One of my associations with Russia is the memory of standing at my apartment window in Moscow and watching the thick, steel gray clouds marching over the high rises, engulfing the top floors. I remember standing in a village outside of Moscow, a village bounded by a birch forest like in a fairy-tale. I drank medovukha and walked down a dirt path to the center of the village, where I walked through high medieval city walls just as the sun was emerging from some clouds. The summer sun hit the gold cupolas of a small basilica, and the light was blinding. The golden light and the sudden flood of warmth over my skin put me in a stupor of awe. I felt right then that the architect must have known one day I would be standing there on a temperamental Russian summer day, blinded by the sudden cloud-disrobed light reflecting off of his church.

Thinking back on my life up until now, I realize how little I appreciated the extraordinary quality it has had. Until recently, my life has been unusual and dream-like in many ways. Unfortunately, I never thought about it in this way because it just was the way it was. Perhaps it is actually my perception of life that is changing.. Either way, I don’t like the fact that my life seems to be fading into coherency and normalcy, fading like the end of a morning dream.
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The storms here in my city-below-the-sea are amazingly intense, storms which feed on the ungodly southern heat like a man swelling and tensing with anger. But for once, I can’t find in myself an analogue to this weather. I watch the tempest blow and think about where I’ve been, while wondering where I went.