Change in the Weather
As the thunder and lightning rumbled and crashed around me and the rain fell like a waterfall the other day, a metaphor built itself on my observations.
When I was about 10 years old I observed after a few summers of experience that the hotter the heat wave the worse the storm that came after, but the change next day was so incredibly clear and beautiful, it was like you wanted every single day to be. As the thunder and lightning rumbled and crashed around me and the rain fell like a waterfall the other day, a metaphor built itself on my observations.
I always called the maples and spruces around my house “my air conditioning units” because they kept the house and soil around it shaded which contributed immensely to how cool the house could be. I grew up without air conditioning and I don't have air conditioning today—it's expensive, it dries out my eyes, we didn't always have this many days with excessive heat—but a few years ago I did concede to a portable unit that keeps my first floor, two rooms, tolerable when it's in the 90s.
We've just finished off a whopper of a heat wave over most of the country. Here in southwestern Pennsylvania they rarely last six days. Our hilly region seemed to cool things down and slow the violent weather as it entered the region. It actually took three storm systems to shove that heat wave across the state and into the sea. And we haven't yet reached that beautiful day.
From those summers in the 1960s our heat waves have been extended by several degrees and several days. The succeeding storms have reached a higher pitch of fury with straight-line winds and sending tornadoes our way—though we are on the edge of the midwestern weather region and we call the counties north of us toward Lake Erie “tornado alley,” they have always been such a rarity down here they weren't even considered possible. Now nearly every thunderstorm is severe and many contain one or more F0 or F1 tornadoes.
A metaphor for today
I see a strong metaphor and many connections between the worsening weather conditions, the heat wave and its ending in today's political and social climate. The heat wave is extreme, relentlessly hotter than it used to be, more difficult to temper with cooling down and providing a series of barriers to slow it.
And the cold front's new-found ferocity will use all the mechanisms it has to avail and chase that heat wave off the east coast and out of this country, out to sea.
So as the move toward authoritarianism continues to raise the heat and violence of its force, it will be met with an equally strong cold front of opposition comprised of we the people using our strength in numbers everywhere in as many ways as are available to us to build up our strength to knock that heat wave down and out in one effort, and to keep those heat waves on the run.
Of course, we will only reach that perfectly clear and beautiful next day if we manage to keep climate change actions and a lot of other government actions and programs active and working for the people who live here and around the world.
We can imitate that change in the weather and be the change for our times, and we need to, if we want not only our Democracy to survive, but if we want our people to survive—and thrive in a system built for everyone.
About the Artwork
I took the photo in 2011 and shared it on my photo website with a narrative, but the image stayed with me. In 2016 I looked it up again and wrote a poem and later named my painting after that poem. Now as a painting it’s hit the major categories of my creative efforts.
Here is the narrative:
Rain had fallen intermittently all day, but the day had been steadily dark and cold even without falling rain. But as often happens on long rainy days, the clouds broke at about sunset to give a view of faded blue sky trimmed along the edges with heavy clouds, offering reflected light but no direct sunlight. Suddenly the autumn leaves shone again even in the cooler light. I carefully watched the light, deciding that when my errand was done, or as soon as I could, whichever came first, I’d head for my favorite ridge to photograph what there was of the sunset, hoping for lots of red from the humidity in the air and sunrays from the layers of clouds breaking up, but I’d take what I could get.
No such dramatics were in the plan for this evening, but I felt the valley settle into night as I watched the clouds march steadily from the north, hearing only the wind as it swept from far beyond the horizon across my face, tugging at my hair and skirt on the hilltop where I stood, one tiny dot of a figure in this complicated and beautiful landscape, chilling my fingers with the first real cold of winter in its direct and determined path. In the center is Carnegie, somewhere in there is my house, and all of the familiar streets and scenes of my days reduced to a few amorphous blots of color, light and shadow.
In just minutes the north wind had carried the cloud cover over the valley once again like a blanket, leaving the valley in deep shadow but for the dots of light collected in the velvet darkness, small shreds of red showing through at the horizon; the sun has not given over yet, there is still some fire in its day.
And here is the poem from 2016:
How Small Beneath the Sky
Tiny toy buildings,
fluttering ribbons of roads,
arcs of light that illuminate our night are but pinpoints in the velvet earth below;
How small beneath the sky.
Poem © Bernadette E. Kazmarski
The original painting is available, as are prints.
The framed original painting is still available and I have prints on paper and canvas in the post for this painting on Portraits of Animals.
You can also find this on my writing website Paths I Have Walked.