Weather

Now that I have moved to the tower, I’m positioned closer to the weather, pushed up against the atmosphere and affected by its changes. Even though I live in the city, and look over the skyline from my vantage point, I feel remote and outcast, as though I’ve renounced my urban life for some sort of insane retreat to the natural world. Winds pour across the outside spaces of the building, shredding a small Japanese maple I bought to provide privacy; the high points of the city are erased by clouds in a matter of moments. The world is an exchange of violent elements, and we are only ever its victims.

One time, when I was younger, driving in a car with an old girlfriend, we were caught in a furious rainstorm in the middle of the bright sunlight. I often remember this freakish moment of weather, where the road in front of us glowed as white as magnesium. The over-exposed light seemed to fill the windscreen, the dashboard, the whole car, and we were no longer able to see the road in front of us as the world whited out. It often occurs to me that we both died at that moment, and everything I have experienced since has been some kind of simulation, provided to the dead to ease their transition into nothingness.