In the darkness of the early morning hours, I contemplate storms over Kansas. My favorite website is The Weather Channel local information which gives moment-by-moment accounts of all weather activity anywhere in the United States and even in some places outside the USA. It includes my favorite online application, the "Interactive Weather Map," which combines a Doppler radar screen with aerial views of the land as well as road and city maps.

The screen shows storms as blotches of green, yellow, and red. The green is lighter rain, the yellow heavier. Red indicates thunderstorms and drenching rain. Points of darker red in the red areas are violent storms and possibly tornadoes. There has been a lot of red over Kansas in the last week. This is not due to Kansas' political orientation as a "red state."

My friend, back home in Lawrence, has confirmed that what she discreetly refers to as "dynamic weather" has been pounding her region, including Lawrence. The river there is close to overflowing and there is some flooding in low-lying areas. Meanwhile, back here in Metro DC, we haven't had any rain in more than a week. I'm looking for rain, looking for green clouds.

With the help of my virtual scope, I can imagine myself flying at impossible speed over the landscape of North America, and other places as well. I can peer down at farmlands, roadways, factories, villages, cities. I can zoom in close enough to see individual houses or stores. And if the Weather Channel's overviewer isn't working, I can always go to Google Earth's worldwide aerial eye, which is available online by going to Google Maps.

Some esoteric traditions believe that you can separate your "soul" from your body and travel across space, unencumbered by the laws of physics. Whether this is true or not, it is a feat of imagination achieved by most people only in dreams. But I can do this imagining while I am awake. The viewer screen only makes my imaginal journeys more accurate. I can imagine myself to be a point of pure perception, an astral falcon swooping like an Egyptian god-form over the prairies and the oceans, looking down onto the rooftops of temples and universities, flying tirelessly by day over endless fields. And by night I track towers of cumulonimbus clouds, illuminated from within by lightning fire, the red areas on the screen. There are more storms over Kansas, and though there is no rain anywhere near me, I hear the sound of distant thunder.

Posted at 2:50 am | link