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Stormy Weather Got Me Moody

Today, it was stormy in Melbourne. The sky turned a perfect silver-grey, and there were record winds (130kmh/80mph). Brush is lying on some roads, and some areas have experienced power outages. While many locals got a bit nervous, I just felt nostalgic. Perhaps it’s because I am in the city, where buildings block probably a lot of the worst winds, but the storms didn’t seem so terrible. And, more than anything, they reminded me of some of the storms in America.

The strangest things can make you nostalgic when you live far away from the place you were born in, even if you don’t even love that place. I can go weeks, perhaps months, without feeling “homesick,” if that’s even what you can call this; about the only thing I constantly miss is my mother. But then, every so often, there’s a food I want, a place I want to see, an accent I want to hear, a custom I want to be graced by. Today was one of those days.

The storms reminded me of all the times I’ve watched rain patter down outside my window–for hours, for days. Sometimes it was welcome, and other times I just wanted it to go away. As we all know, though, nature has a mind of its own. I forget that a little, living in Melbourne, where the weather is mostly temperate, even if I do still get cold in the winter. I was reminded of how amazing nature is, how its a wild bull that no one can control. We merely react to what it does.

It made me think of the many times in school that there were tornado drills, where the sirens would scream and we’d file none-too-neatly into our supposedly-safe places. It also makes me think of the numerous times the sirens weren’t a test, and the time some less than competent teacher placed children of my overcrowded middle school in front of glass doors as we hunkered down, head between knees. Prize educator, indeed.

I think it’s odd that I feel nostalgic about that which could potentially kill others and myself, but then maybe that’s my morbid side coming out. Or maybe it’s not the storms I’m missing. Maybe I just associate the storms with other things that I miss. Maybe it’s the rainbows and occasionally being away from the city that I long for.

Sometimes I miss the times where I just walked down the road to a lake. Sometimes I miss really green grass that’s so green because it rains a little more often. (With so few rainstorms here, we usually only get grass of a green-brown color.) Sometimes I miss roads that have farms on the left and right of them. In a country that is dry and highly urbanized, you’re not likely to see much of what I miss, and parks don’t cut it.

We always want what we can’t easily have, don’t we? I’m glad to be away from small town politics, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss some things about living in smaller, less-populated areas. Maybe I’m just made for the ‘burbs.

Comments ordered from oldest to newest.

Edrei

Yesterday’s windstorm kicked up a fuss where I was at. The sky was red with desert dust. The wind was warm and dusty, yet managing to still be damp with rain. Ironically it’s days like that which I feel most alive and eager to do work.

We’re polar opposites on the matter though. I lived close enough to the city to feel slightly lost without it’s chaos. Yet at the same time, it’s moments in small town places like where I am now that give me a measure of peace.

In that we may share that similarity. The balance between the chaotic bustle and the contemplating silence. Surburbia.

Lelia Katherine Thomas

For some reason, suburbia just always makes me think of American Beauty. That really can’t be good, considering the movie.