February

Duet for Thunderstorm and Piano

We’re looking for storms tonight. We’d like thunderstorms, but we’ll be satisfied with plain rain. A rousing thunderstorm would be beautiful; bring on the storm with stabbing, dashing forks of crooked lightning; give us thunder rumbles that would shake the fortitude of even the mightiest of men. Let the rain come down in that spacious smell of petrichor and ozone in the evening. Give us a breeze blowing through the bedroom window as we sleep, white noise dreaming of thunder beyond the curtains.

That’s me – and I don’t even look like me when I’m sleeping. Ignore the doorbell. Ignore the phone. Let me sleep. Let me dream. Let me listen to the night. I love this song: Duet for Thunderstorm and Piano.

We’re looking for storms tonight, for magnificent weather, wishing for winds to blow through the building, and through the budding trees, for rain falling from a low ceilinged sky. We’re watching for lightning strikes. We’re watching for repeated lightning strikes. We’re waiting for the flash and boom of mellifluous thunder so loud that it cracks the sky in half. I shouldn’t have said anything. I shouldn’t have said anything because it’s time for me to go to sleep.

The boy child of memory sits at the screen door during the thunderstorm with a coloring book and a stuffed rabbit. The rain is his favorite friend. The telephone rings and everything begins again. Waiting for you in the morning with an eye for the falling. Potted plants and ringing phones go on forever. Have we arrived? Are we lost? Let me watch and smell and feel the rain and I am content.

When It Rains in November

When it rains in November everything gets smeared.

After the Storm

A storm blew through our area this afternoon, sudden and violent. Rain and howling wind.  And then, as abruptly as it began, it was over. The light of the setting sun glittered in the lingering rain drops. All was calm again. Well... almost everything.

Rain of Fire

It will occasionally rain fire in South Dakota...

Evening and Nighttime Photography in South Dakota

I am currently in Keystone, South Dakota. I'm here for meetings. This is a great place - but ... meetings.... blah.

We drove up (my wife and I) with some good friends of ours. It's surprising how riding with good people can make a 10 hour drive seem so much shorter. The first photo is of the South Dakota sun setting through storm clouds. My friend, John, didn't want to stop (again) so I could get out and take pictures (again), so I stuck my head out of the moving van to take this one.

The second photo below is of the Ponderosa Pine trees growing on the granite rocks behind our hotel. I went out for a walk around the grounds after we got here late Monday night, set up my tripod and took a few photos.

A Haiku – September 17, 2015 (Thunder)

thunder that woke me
still echoes in my head
though the rain has ceased

He Felt the Glory, but Did Not Understand

He sat alone in the scrub grass and flowering weeds on the side of the hill. Further up, at the crest of the hill, was County Road 29; a metal guard-rail curved between the edge of the blacktop and gravel and the steep slope. Below him was the rocky shoreline of Cedar Lake. Men fished there sometimes, with their coolers of beer and lawn-chairs. But not today. Today a storm brewed over the waters. 

Already the wind was whipping the weedy plants around him on either side. He could smell their green and yellow scent, of pollen and spring, mixed with the ozone smell of thunderstorms. Out over the lake, heavy metal clouds hovered, silver grey-blue, like cobalt. He wondered for a moment how clouds so heavy could stay up. And then a thundercrack rocked the sky, jarring him. His teeth clamped down on his tongue and he yelped in pain and surprise. He spat and saw a bit of blood mixed with his saliva.

He’d come out on Country Road 29 on his bike, which was still where he left it-at the top of the hill, this side of the guard-rail. Now he wished he’d worn a jacket. Even if he ran up the slope and rode back towards home, he knew he couldn’t outrun the storm. And what was at home anyway? Nothing. Loss. Emptiness. He was going to be soaked and he didn’t care. At least, he told himself he didn’t care.

Thunder cracked again, not the sky-splitting, deafening, end of the world, apocalyptic boom as before, but loud and darting, seemingly without a center, without a point of origin. It came from all directions at once, from everywhere and nowhere, rumbling across the lake, echoing back and forth, up the hillside and down into the depths of his soul. A few small stones, loosened by the wind and the rumble, skittered down the hillside.

“What?” he asked, looking out over the white capped waves on the lake. “What do you want to say?”  He wasn’t sure to whom he was speaking. Was it God? Himself? The World? The great Whomever? It didn’t matter, only the wind answered him. Trees along the shore waved and shook in the gusts; leaves fluttered, battered in all directions. Some were carried up, others circled in fierce, demented eddies. And then the rain began to fall in hard stinging drops. “Tell me!” he shouted.  And the rain became a roar.

Lightning ripped through the darkened sky. And again, fiery flashing forks stabbing down from the clouds. A bolt ripped through a copse of oaks, mixing a shower of sparks and smoke with the falling rain. A thick branch fell to the ground, smoldering.

He should have been afraid. He knew that.  Somewhere deep in the primitive, limbic-system part of his brain, in the lizard-brain responsible for feeding, and fighting and fleeing, he knew that he should have been terrified. He was exposed. Vulnerable. Thunder bellowed from the sky, but he did not flinch.  Lighting struck again and again, but he didn’t even shiver. He stood up. His clothes were soaked through with rain, his hair matted down in disarray. He wiped the water from his face and raised his arms. “There is glory here!” he shouted. “Glory!” He felt it, but did not understand.

Redbud before the Storm

Redbud before the Storm by Jeff Carter on 500px

A Walk Downtown

It doesn't feel much like December.  It's been in the 50s (F) for several days, and it rained - alternating heavy pounding rain, and light misty drizzle - all day today.  This evening it's still somewhat balmy ( considering that it's December in Iowa) so I took my camera out for a stroll through the downtown square.

I used two lenses tonight: my Super Takumar 50mm and my Albinar 80 - 205mm.

Storm Moon

Last night was the full moon - the strawberry moon.  Tonight it's the storm moon.  We're under a storm warning tonight, but the moon is wonderful.

Storm Moon (Saturday 14, June, 2014) by Jeff Carter on 500px

A Storm's Coming

A Poem as I Drive

An afternoon spent driving across the state of Iowa
and I’m composing, in my head, a poem, a haiku perhaps,
contrasting the grey clouds overhead
with the burning reds and gold of corn
and changing leaves

                grey skies hold rain
                ready to extinguish
                fiery leaves

I’m still thinking on it… but before I can finish,
before the words can settle into place,
we’ve driven out from underneath
those threatening skies and heavy clouds
into bright sun and blue.

July Anomalies A – Z: Thunder

I was sent from the Power
with lightning and with hail
and with the sound of a very loud trumpet,
I was sent.

Look at the sky,
I am there.
Hear me, hear me,
but do not wait for me to speak.

I am the silence that follows.
I am the burning smell of ozone.
I am the unpaid professional.

I am novels of war and songs of peace.
I am the richest of the poor
living in gold plated squalor.
I break cedars and shake deserts.

I am alone in the sky
unequalled among the many.

I go where I will, following the decrees
and the path that he laid down for me.

Over floods,
over kings,
over people with peace.

Tremble beneath my words.

Pray that the thunders cease
and will release you.

Stretch out your hands
and the rains will stop.

Let the sea, and all that it contains,
fish and great sea monsters give praise;
let the fields smile under their burdens.
The folds of your flesh may be solid,
but if thunder should strike?

This is part of July Anomalies A-Z, a creative writing exercise and not intended to be an altogether accurate picture of the creature described above.  It is based, somewhat, on the Gnostic text, Thunder, the Perfect Mind.

What Happened to the Other Boats? Mark 4: 35 – 41 Elaborated

That day when evening came, he said to his disciples, “Let us go over to the other side.”  Leaving most of the crowd behind, they took him along, just as he was, in the boat.  Some of the crowd followed in other boats with him. 

A furious squall came up, and the waves broke over the boast so that they were nearly swamped.  Jesus was in the stern of his disciples’ boat, sleeping on a cushion.

The wind howled and the waves crashed and soon the other boats were sunk.  Those in the boat tried to swim towards the boat in which Jesus was sleeping, but they were overtaken by the waves and they drowned.   

Then the disciples woke Jesus and shouted at him, “Don’t you care if we drown?” 

He got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, “Quiet! You be still!” The wind died down and it was completely calm.

He said to his disciples, “Why are you afraid?”

And they answered him, “The other boats sank in the storm…”

He said to them, “Do you still have no faith?”
And they were terrified.

This is an elaboration of a story from Mark's gospel (4: 35 - 41). Mark included the seemingly irrelevant detail that "There were also other boats with him," but doesn't say why or what happened to them.  

My Favorite Sky

I’m Thinking Thoughts of Lightning

The smell of dirt and ozone
in the cool of the day
when the Spirit comes to me
on waves of polarized light,

I'm thinking thoughts of lightning,
and I’m waiting for the flash,

I’m waiting for the smell of rain

in this shadowed valley

where the ruins of immortality

make parables,

parables and riddles
as rain drops make expanding
concentric ripples.

(2012)

The Secret Place of Thunder - Freesound Dare #11

The theme of Freesound Dare #11 is, fittingly enough, Spring.  As we're getting a few minutes more sunlight every day (at least, those of us in the Northern Hemisphere), and as the temperatures are beginning to rise we are starting to think about Spring.

But the word Spring - in English - has many different meanings.  Among it's many connotations  it could be the season, it could be a mechanical spring, it could be a flow of water from the ground.  The challenge of the dare was to include these three different ideas in a work using sounds from the Freesound Project.

Here is my entry: The Secret Place of Thunder

The title is drawn from Psalm 81:7.
"You called me in trouble and I rescued you,
I answered you from the secret place of thunder."

If you like it, feel free to download it and to share it with a friend.

I used the following sounds and only these sounds from the Freesound Project:

Distant Thunder

Rainstorm

Spring River

Mysterious Traveler
Blackbird Trill

Jaw Harp

The thunder, rain, and spring river sounds should be pretty obvious. I didn't mess around with them very much.   The blackbird trill was put through a number of delay effects, as was the mysterious traveler bird noise.  The the bass line and the melody were played with the jaw harp sound in a couple of different layers with multiple effects - some of which created another layer of bird-like tones - which fit in very well with the rest of the piece.

This song goes well with another of my recent bird songs - Anxious For Nothing

Thunderstorm

From the Heart of the Tempest

Then from the heart of the tempest Yahweh gave Job his answer. (Job 38:1)