Double Rainbow with a Side of Lightning

One of the better attempts at a panorama of the scene. Double rainbow, no lightning yet.

Ever since I started watching this light show yesterday evening, I've been trying to compose some thoughts and words to go along with it. But words won't do the trick here. At least, not words I can come up with right now. I have had a "right brain headache" (where I got hit) since my "pretty good day" of Monday, when I got some work on a drawing project done. So the creative words may just be hiding under all that.

So, really, I was all set to just push some work around the place, cleaning and such. The headache that started with waking up hadn't gone away enough to do much else. I heard it raining, and some distant thunder, and took a look outside. 

The first thing I noticed was the double rainbow. The lower band was particularly intense, with the upper band stronger than I've seen in a double rainbow. They arced across a backdrop of gray clouds, and band between the two was darker than above or below, with below being quite a bit brighter.

As I watched, lightning flickered around the scene. I decided to watch until I'd had enough, which ended up being like 45 minutes or an hour, with the remnants of the lighting in the far distance, and when the last of the rainbow finally faded. The rainbow faded in & out & in several times throughout. Somewhere in there, the lower band intensified until it had a faint additional rainbow repeated immediately under it. At some point, I decided it was too cool to not try to capture some of it on camera to share with everyone. I got some decent shots, too.

The lightning ones come from stills of video I took. I might try to edit it into a movie at some point, but even slowed down, the lightning flashes are pretty fast.

Really, the thing that struck me most with all this intense beauty and power, force and threat, was it as the most appropriate metaphor for my life & my brain right now. There's lots of art & writing in there that wants to come out. But it's interrupted by the lightning storms of the migraines & headaches, which themselves may someday be a conduit for some other kind of creativity. If I can manage to hang on long enough.

My brain is hard-wired to be creative. It needs to let it out, I need to express things in paint or words, otherwise it interrupts my natural positive feedback loop. And that's pretty much where I'm at. Extremely interrupted. It's not good, and I have no idea when, how, or if it's going to get better.

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