Brief Rain

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Although the Rainy monsoon season does not normally kick in for another few months, we just had a freak thunderstorm move through at midday.  I couldn’t wait to test out my new pair of sports sandals on the wet pavements and rocks.  They worked wonderfully, gripping like crampons!  They should serve me well for the wet half of the year (while my older pair slips on the wet and is only good for the dry half). 

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It was also nice to step out into the fresh air of an ongoing thunderstorm with its coolness.  The air smells so clean.  Unfortunately, when it stops raining, the steam starts to rise (even without the sun shining), and the humidity makes you wringing wet.  It’s tropical! 

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As I was unloading groceries at home, my back suddenly gave me an amazingly sharp and horrendous pain, pain in my T7 sore spot worse than I’ve had for many, many months – that old feeling like I’d just been hit square on the spine at vertebra T7 with a hard-swung ball bat and then had it crushed by tightening vise-grips.  It hurts to breathe. 

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I did nothing to provoke it, so I suspected the weather – the drop in barometric pressure that accompanies a storm, because this storm was another anomaly.  So, I checked the weather history of our area for recent days.  What I saw was quite a high gradual variability in the pressure within each day.  But what were different were the sharp sudden ups and downs today, with a very sharp drop at the time of my local shopping foray.  Ouch!  

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Dukkha, in some variety, is always a fact of life, hovering just over your shoulder, ready to pounce.  It hurts to type, so I shall stop here. 

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-Zenwind.

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