It was hot here Sunday afternoon, no surprise really, afternoons have been bumping up against the 100 degree mark for a few weeks now and about the only cooldown comes after a good rain.
We walked from shade to shade, finally finding enough shade that one could have a social conversation in the quiet of the forecourt. Each time I come to this place, I try to quiet my mind down so my senses might become just a bit more connected to this memorial. I saw two coneflowers in bloom, presented as yellow structures against the green lawn just tinged with brown. We sat quietly using the tree and the last bit of granite that hadn’t yet exceeded 100 degrees surface temperature.
We spoke about memorial, about the sequence of spaces, sounds and materials that skillfully removed visitors from their scheduled lives, from the difficulty parking, from their immediate problems, to help them imagine, or remember the chaos that followed the collapse of the stack in 1999. Twelve people died in that collapse, difficult deaths, crushed to a point where they were pinned, but still conscious, directing rescue efforts towards others on their teams trapped in the tangle of logs and cables until their voices, shouting directions, turned silent. S&R teams were unprepared to rescue people from a tangle this big, where each log moved put other trapped people at risk, it took hours, unprecedented initiative in calling in construction cranes and loaders to carefully secure and remove the logs. A horrible event at 2AM.
I remember being amazed that the huge granite planes in the forecourt were all a single block. Their shape led me to believe it was two blocks skillfully joined to hide the connection, but on close inspection, they were one.
After the crowd thinned, we walked down the stone path, a path designed to narrow as one approaches the memorial site, a path constrained by a tall berm on the left, and a low granite timeline on the right (the 1963 stone is missing, no bonfire happened immediately following the death of the President in Dallas. We walked slowly, silently, arriving at the circle of stones and finding a bit of shadow to sit in. The granite was hot, over 90 degrees I’d guess. But the shade made it more bearable. We talked about material, ok I talked about material, making my friend laugh. I can see now that I hide myself behind a wall of little facts whenever I’m nervous. And I was nervous.
Finally settlling, I could smell rain on the wind. No clouds looked immediately threatening, but within a few minutes, lighting in the northern sky reminded me of counting the seconds between flash and rumble, then comparing with subsequent flashes to know, is the storm moving towards us or away from us. Winds were picking up and seemed to be heading right into the storm as the flashes grew more frequent. One mississippi, two mississippi, then boom! The times were steadily decreasing which meant the storm was closing.
The wind suddenly shifted and was now flowing right out of the storm, right at us. I knew that meant rain was imminent. But it was so hot, and I couldn’t see rain on the horizon so we sat and spoke some more with few words.
The air flowing out of the storm became noticeably cooler, and sprinkles began. We sat for awhile, enjoying the splat of rain on our faces, then walked around the portals making up the memorial. The bronze portals inserted in the granite portal had poetry, personal quotes about the person who had passed away that night. Some of the poetry was as impressive as Rilke. I wondered what class they wrote in and if the writing intensive courses today was producing work of that quality.
The wind picked up, we could see the rain on the road a half mile east, hear the roar of it as it fell on traffic, and now had nowhere to go for dry shelter.
The rain came in hard now, sheets of rain, driven by strong winds. We huddled behind the thin stone portal leg, two of us trying to stand in the rain shadow of one of the monoliths. We stood there silently as rain pelted, lighting flashed and boomed instantly, and a siren went off ominously.We stood close, protecting each other, every once in a while asking if we should run for it or stay some more. I liked staying. The rain smelled clean, cool, kind of a northern rain I want to say. The wind must have been 40 degrees cooler and even though laden with rain, felt dry. Our standing had become a kind of rhythmic sway as we tried to dodge bursts of water and wind, mostly successful, but each of us had the left half of our pants soaked.
Then, it stopped. We began walking through the light shower, walking around the deeper pools formed on the path, past the rivers running in the street, stepping lightly over the leaf boats making their way down to the storm drain at great speed. We went back, changed and set out leftovers, soup, green beans, and some dish made of a part of a cow I don’t think I’d ever tried to eat, and may never try again. But before long, we were standing together as if the rain had followed us. I tried to make a safe place in my arms, we spent perhaps an hour just looking into each others eyes. Then it was time to go back to work. As fast as the rain had begun, it ended.
Usually when it thunderstorms, I’m running to check for leaks at brook hollow, next time, I’ll run a bit slower, and stop and smell the raindrops and remember two trying to become one to overcome the rain all around us.
Keep a weather eye out! If a low green cloud rolls out in front of the storm, appears to curve (bow) watch the southwest edge carefully, thats where the vortex will begin, and once formed, who knows where it will end.
Be good to each other.
