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Friday, July 02, 2004 Thank you, Marlon Brando, for performances that redefined American acting and impacted the craft in deceptively deep ways. For an eyeful of spectacular work, watch A Streetcar Named Desire, On The Waterfront, The Godfather and Last Tango In Paris. For something lighter, try Guys and Dolls or The Freshman (in which Brando put together a sly, extremely funny send-up of his work in The Godfather). ************* Yes, in case you were wondering, Ms. Nature supplied hours of wholesome entertainment last night. All evening long, thunder muttered, lightning flickered off in the distance, west and north of here. Around 11:30 it decided to move this way -- becoming progressively louder, rain starting to come down -- until it reached the hill, bringing an intense display of sound and light. I'm not sure I've ever experienced anything like it -- a continuous, nearly hour-long barrage of flashing and window-rattling explosions. During the rare moments when both lightning and thunder paused, the roar of torrential rain filled what would otherwise have been blessed silence. For a while the storm hovered directly over the hill, producing a string of lightning bolts paired with thunderclaps that refused to wait for a one-thousand-and-one/one-thousand-and-two countdown. Immense, crackling explosions of nearly simultaneous light and noise, indicating strikes right here in the neighborhood. Got me wondering if I'd be seeing trees down come daylight. Got me feeling grateful that thunder/lightning don't tend to bother me in a frayed-nerves sort of way. Which got me thinking about a one-time family member who did get rattled in that way: Scout, our dog from my elementary school years (so named to commemorate the family's involvement in scouting -- or most of the family, me being the single truculent holdout). A smart, endearing little guy, the result of a party thrown by an Irish setter and a terrier. Or some ungodly blend like that, producing a handsome, mid-sized, slightly high-strung canine. (I would not be surprised, however, if the high-strung part of his character resulted from life with us rather than genetics.) Thunderstorms made him shiver with dread, got him whining from fear and nerves. We went away one weekend day, taking off early in the morning and leaving Scout home, in the kitchen. My parents had installed a small wooden gate in the kitchen doorway to keep him confined to that room on occasions like this. While we were gone, big storms moved through the area. When we returned late that night, we found wood shavings all over the place, the result of a frightened, lonely dog gnawing nervously at the bottom of the gate. That was in our little house on Long Island. The same little house in which I had the closest encounter with electrical storm weirdness I've ever experienced. One afternoon, in my 13th year: me, in the bathroom. On the throne, meditating. (Probably more information than you wanted, but instrumental in this story. Sorry.) I was into CB radio in those years, my father and I had installed a big mother of an antenna on the roof. Sizeable, impressively tall, moored to the eave at one end of the house, a grounding wire running down to a spike driven into the ground. As I sat pondering, that afternoon, a fast-moving storm rolled into the area, bringing thunder, lightning. The sky lit up especially intensely from one particularly close bolt, thunder sounded at exactly the same time. The house literally shook, as houses will do when their CB antennas are struck by massive atmospheric discharges of electricity. And there in that teeny bathroom, to the other side of the washbasin from me, a thin, purple stream of electricity extended out from the light switch, stretching across the room into the bathtub, making a quiet sizzling sound as it went, then disappearing. Happening so fast there wasn't even time for my jaw to drop open. One of those moments that whip by in no time flat, while moving so slowly within the moment that I could watch the stream of current as it elongated forth, made contact, vanished. I don't remember if I was regular before the event. I'm sure I was after. No wild weather today. A beautiful Friday -- clouds and sun, breezy, cool. Tranquil. Which is fine with me. And somehow, July 4th weekend has weaseled its way in. Last I knew it was Christmastime, I was in Madrid. We really need to figure out how to slow everything down just a bit. But that's a rant for another entry. Madrid, te echo de menos. rws 6:40 AM [+]
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