I witnessed one of the most beautiful happenings in all my life on this planet:  a thunderstorm. Oh, how utterly standard and mundane you may think. But, this is not true (in my opinion) for the first time I comprehended more of the immensity that is a thunderstorm (really I ought to say lightning storm, for that was the star of “performance”). Having spent some time researching and studying electricity (and, again, here lightning be the star of the show) as well as neuroscience (more electricity) so with the history, movement, evolution, and tomes of electricity coursing through my fevered and excited brain (fevered and excited at what new things I am learning and thinking and comprehending), this lightning storm was completely different than all others I had witnessed before it. I thought of the reports I’d read of Nikola Tesla supine upon his couch in his laboratory beneath the great windows contemplating lightning, perhaps giving birth to new thoughts, ideas, inventions, and inspirations.

I thought of the report of Benjamin Franklin and his famous (albeit usually incorrectly described or outright fabricated) kite and key experiment. It’s funny that this is what is most associated with Franklin and yet it is but a minor event among his feats. One must never trust the schools to impart any kind of information or knowledge. It is greatly misgiving and deceiving.

Mostly, I contemplated the power of efficient use of lightning. What can be accomplished with its unleashed power (nowadays such a natural occurrence as electricity is leashed and has been since the days of Thomas Alva Edison. What insanity is this? What absurdity I this? To leash the abundance of electricity?! Prior to the innovations of Edison, electricity was studied because its powers were so mysterious and so curious. But it was Edison who thought of how to leash it in order to profit from it. It was Edison, so I’ve read reported, that came up with the idea of charging people by the kilowatt hour. Up until then, electricity was merely turned on or off, like the valve of a water hose). I can see how all those great minds were as enamored with electricity. How all those fevered minds were excited into experimentation.

Such beauty, this lightning. It’s the action, the interaction of cloud, ground (earth), particles, atoms, molecules, direction and current, all combining into this reaction called Lightning. How interesting its origins. Light-ning. Yes, light. It is brighter than any other I’ve seen on Earth, and enough to spoil the sun before my eyes. And I thought of the brain, and the “lightning” that is said to occur there. I love the possibilities of this planet, I truly love what it is capable of including growing humans). What disturbs me are the utterly unnatural (as blatantly arrogant supernatural) regulations performed by humans.

*Image Credits (all work used through permission of CC license or public domain)–
“Nikola Tesla relajandose en su laboratoria (Colorado Springs, 1899)” by Recuerdos de Pandora
“Double Strike” by Michael Bolognesi
“Benjamin Franklin Drawing Electricity from the Sky (ca. 1816” by Benjamin West

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• Photographing Lightning (kpburgess.wordpress.com)
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