I’ve been editing all day and am kinda’ running low on creative juices. I decide to take a break less because of my block and more because there is an unresistable thunderstorm on display outside my bedroom window. I get a fresh beer and lean against the top windowpane with my upper body halfway outside. Drops from the roof land between my glasses and my eye. Amazingly, I have a completely unobstructed southern sky outside my rear apartment window and this seems to be where most of the action is. I stare into the hazy sky, only the strobing streaks of light give a sense of depth as they jump across the underbelly of the clouds. The night is also hazy, lighting up most of the sky with each flash. The bolts themselves are surrounded by a halo of light, not-so-subtly hinting at their celestial origins.

The Rolling Stones play behind me on my video editing station. I just downloaded the entire discography. Before the light show I had been completely immersed in technology. I wonder how the same static electricity that stands reliably in place on plastic disks spinning at 5400rpm is the same stuff that displays it’s raw potential power in the night sky right now. How could technology ever surpass such an event like a lightning storm, which by Nature’s standards is pedestrian. I have another sip of beer. It was bottled in a factory, the glass itself mechanically molded to exact specifications, the beer precisely brewed in conditions scientifically tested to bring about optimum flavor, complexity, repeatability. Then I remember the danger of encountering a deer in late summer. They often eat the fermented apples fallen off the orchard trees, getting drunk and unpredictable. They keep eating those apples. I keep drinking my beer.

Another flash. The bolt takes up my entire field of vision.

Lightning never strikes the same place twice. You can never predict where the next one will be. That’s what makes it so hard to photograph. Sensitive dependence upon initial conditions. Chaos Theory. Electrons following the path of least resistance along a chain of ionized air molecules. Atomic cations and anions finding a way to each other across hundreds of feet, trillions of times larger than themselves. Must be True Love.

Another drop of water from the roof lands right in my eye. Lightning may not strike twice but roof water does. The flashes are getting less dramatic and farther apart. At least I caught the big finale. The cat wants to know what’s so interesting. Clearly his toy mouse deserves much more attention. Between he and the window, who needs cable TV? Maybe a Media Studies grad student does.

No more beer. Time to get back to work and apply a fresh perspective.