(no subject)

The drought did not *break* today, exactly, but it cracked; we had about ten minutes of glorious, drenching downpour, the first significant rain since July 3rd. Midafternoon, after the rain, I was walking to a meeting and felt a huge zing of energy at the feel of cool wetness, the smell of damp earth and grass, felt a great upsurge of blissful regenerative life force, like I might suddenly burst into song and start dancing about. Then I turned a corner and caught sight of the front of the student union and noticed that the flags were at half-staff, and briefly thought, Hah?? What th'--? And then, Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Without looking back at my blog entry from two years ago, I've been seeing what I remember from the blur of that day, and it boils down to these bits:

--Searching and searching for some, any, on-line news source that would load;
--Feeling a terrible need to stay calm, rational, and unflapped;
--Feeling a corresponding rage at my office-neighbor who was stridently and loudly proclaiming that It's war, it's World War Three, this is it! -- really having to throttle back the urge to scream at her SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP;
--Seeing a Bosnian refugee student in the career center, sitting hunched over in front of a TV that had been set up, sobbing and sobbing;
--Later, after the university had been closed for the day, pushing my bike through the great crowd of students walking slowly and silently toward their cars, buses, dorm rooms.

I have no Deep Thoughts to offer; there's really nothing I can say. It's started raining again outside, and that's good, and every five minutes or so I can hear planes flying by overhead.