Krakathoom!

There's something about that instant when you hear a really loud thundercrash that takes the thousands of years of civilization and rational thought, tears them to shreads, and chucks them out your fucking ears.

All day at work today I'd been checking CNN periodically for updates on Hurricane Rita, Mother Nature's little "No really, I'm gunning for you bastards" message to the evacuees from Hurricane Katrina, and of course things are looking more and more dire. I'm in Minnesota, so this doesn't affect me directly but I'm still rather concerned about the whole situation. Suddenly I hear rain like galloping horses on the roof and a supervisor yelling over cube walls for people to get off the phones and head downstairs!

Wait, what? Didn't they get the part where I'm not in a hurricane-prone state?

After a moment of disorientation I realize that this obviously has nothing to do with the major natural disaster I've been reading about all day. It's merely a severe thunderstorm warning with a side of tornado watch. Some trees would be uprooted and it was unlikely to be a big deal. Still, we filed downstairs in our elementary school tornado-drill shuffle and hole up in a centrally located conference room to wait.

Everytime we hear a thunderstrike, my co-worker looks up at the ceiling. He points this out to me after the 3rd or 4th, and I observe it for several more. Even after discussing how ridiculous it is at some length, his head still jerks upward with each crash. "The ceiling's still there," I reassure him teasingly. He can't help it though, there's some instinctual override in that split-second of panic.

I think that moment of horror, that deep knowledge that life could be ripped asunder in a flash, is why I like watching lightning storms so much.

That, and they're pretty.