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The impending thunderstorm outside dims the midday light and bathes the air in an unnatural hue. The contrast fades from the light, the forms are softer but somehow more menacing in the ambient yellowness. Torrents of rain fall now. They lash and scourge the ground, the trees, the cars, anything exposed. For all its violence I wish it would continue–the white sheets of splatters of the bulging drops have an element of white noise to them as they come and go, ebb and flow like any water would. And while the contrast of the light may have dimmed, the contrast between the hostility on the other side of the thick glass and the peace of this small room could hardly be greater.

I need to go flying again. It’s been a week now since I took my recheck. As much as I need to fly regularly to keep my aptitude in the cockpit, there’s a very large (probably characteristically male) part of me that wants to see if it feels any different now that I have my license. It’s tangentially related to that impulse that compels us to try out a new power tool or a new gadget just to indulge our new “capabilities,” or that compels me (I won’t speak for men in general here) to disassemble a perfectly functional item just to see firsthand how the parts fit together and the details of its operation. I hope very much to go flying later this week, by this weekend at the latest.

I spent yesterday evening at hers and her family’s house for an Easter dinner. She has two younger siblings and they both have significant others, so it was a large gathering, and a resoundingly pleasant one. Her mother is a fantastic cook and unfailingly hospitable, qualities, great though they already are, I’m sure will only be magnified in the present generation. Diane and I cleaned the kitchen afterward, always a welcome task for me. She made me an “Easter box,” complete with candy (particularly noteworthy was a bag of giant peanut M&Ms), a wonderful card and a collection of mix cds, two “best of” Coldplay compilations among them. I’m warming to that band. In making her my reciprocal gift, a mix cd of U2 love songs, I have to admit I was a bit surprised to find how few straightforward love songs U2 penned. Even the more open-faced ones have a “twist” to them, be it irony, a larger reflection on society or an underlying precariousness, often all three. Not that that fazed me in compiling the cd–that quality of the band’s songs is part of the reason I have such an affection for them in the first place. Thumbing through my collection of their music bought to light a recurring thought I’ve had about many U2 songs–they’re written from a second person point of view. It’s not pressingly noteworthy; after all, many artists have written songs that dismiss the form “I did such-and-such” and “he did such-and-such” in favor of “you did such-and-such.” But ever since I started listening to U2’s music that element in their songs would strike me. And I often wondered, and this I shared with Diane yesterday afternoon, why there was not more prose written in that style, novels and short stories and so on. It’s evident it would take a fair amount of psychological knowledge of the character involved to be able to write consistently in that style, but really no more than writing something in first or third person. Is it pretentious to “project” thoughts and feelings onto the reader in that fashion (“You went _____, and then you felt _____.”)? I’m sure someone has done it; I’m just not aware. But all the same, if the muse should come, I would like to try it. My only self-imposed condition would be that it not be a gimmick, that it should serve the core themes of whatever I’m writing and be as seamless as possible. The potential is compelling to think about.

The moon sat on the trees last night as I drove home from her house. The atmospheric refraction magnified and reddened its glow. It really is another world, not just a flat icon painted in oils on some celestial canvas. I wish you could have seen it with me.