This is the Dramatic Weather Agency.
Whenever you’re taken by a strange urge
and you find yourself standing in the middle of the street
in your cul de sac
your arms thrust up toward the sky
your heart pounding
the wind whipping past you
the leaves spun around you in a vortex
And your brain is screaming with delight
as the clouds pile on clouds pile on deep, deep eerie grey
and the clouds come toward you
like the hordes of heaven and hell together
and at any moment the sky will be torn apart
and the rain will tumble out
with a fury unimaginable.
And in this strange humid moment you can feel it about to happen.
You can feel it so clearly.
It.
And then you go inside.
Sip at your beer.
Maybe tidy up the kitchen counter.
That’s when they’ve failed.
Because the Dramatic Weather Agency knows that’s when it should have happened.
And if they’re in your town, they’ll make sure it does.
They’re the guys.
They’ll make sure, that when that
“feeling’s in the air”,
that that feeling is not just
“in the air.”
O they will, alright. (Alright!)
They check their forecast.
(Their forecast, not yours.)
(Your forecast is often off by a day or a whole degree.)
(Theirs is not.)
(They’ve got connections high at the bureau.)
(So they know.)
They circle maps.
Draw hexagons on graph paper.
And nod at each other like they know,
you know?
(They know.)
Then they’re ready to go.
They roll out all serious.
A cold front is moving toward the Eastern seaboard, creating a weather system here and here. With weather events from here to about here expected developing over the weekend, tapering off into the KSSHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH SHHHH Waaaaaaaaa. Btbtbtbt
They roll in all serious.
Eyes hidden up behind dark rain or shine glasses.
Black gloves on tight.
Suits just so.
The Dramatic Weather Agency has arrived, ladies and gentlemen.
Your tax dollars at work!
Ever since waaay back then—yes—back there—in the day
when a right honourable lawmaker looked up from his desk,
and out the window at all that out there
and was struck by a sudden crystalization of all things
and gasped
Never would a sunshower be wasted!
Nor a thunderstorm.
Nor the whipping blizzard.
Nor that subtle, just-so breeze in the heady summer night.
Not for the Dramatic Weather Agency.
Now from that height of lofty idealism emerges the
rutty, nitty, gritty of reality.
Plans are drawn up.
Plans are scaled back.
Budgets cut means corners cut.
One must endure the jeers from pundits and peanut galleries who decry the agency as “meteorillogical” or a “totally pathetic fallacy”.
One must make concessions, here and there,
to exist within a system that doesn’t intrinsically value your perspective
on which shit matters — and which shit’s shit.
And even if this or even if that,
One ought to celebrate that something of actual, futable value has somehow crawled out from under our bureaucracy.
So, ladies and gentlemen,
as the fiscal year draws to its close,
we ask you to shut up, and go outside,
and think about every moment of beauty
and every life given meaning.
This is the Dramatic Weather Agency.
When they’re successful they’re invisible. They just plant the seeds for the wind and the rain (and then you) to harvest.
A mission success is a feeling deeply felt in unity with the planet.
And when they nail it, it goes deep and it echoes and it persists and it ricochets in unexpected geometries.
Like there’s layers under everything.
Like there’s more.
But don’t count on it
Maybe just dream on it—
That the pin on their map
and the other pin on their map
are connected by a string
that casts a shadow over your cul de sac.
And maybe you’d be so lucky.
And then it would have happened.
(it.)
Heavy news on such a heavy day
(Oh, the humidity!)
If you wait long enough, or they're not caught up in traffic
The wind and rain tearing ruthlessly at your pants
thrilling through you
A stranger stranded in the mist.
A ray of sunlight into the spot in the corner you should have packed up last year.
Sheets and sheets and sheets of rain.
A thick fog for a light to shine through.
A pillow of snow’s otherworldly stillness to embrace the tears.
Clean new snow is a soft cushion to lull you, like someone took an eraser to your agenda. Let it be a shift. A delicate new beginning.
Behind it all, a dramatic weather agent, and a mission planned out just so carefully.
The grey cloud that casts a dangerous idea
The icy air
Wind
And then, as the snow melts and warm fingers of sunshine cut through the winter for the first time this year, they’ll send you outside with someone. Just for a casual stroll, maybe grab lunch? And whoever it is, you will fall in love with that person.
And in late fall, when the air falls cold as fast as the wind can clear it away, and the dry leaves skitter in whorls over dusty asphalt — They spark the wanderlust in you again, without even lifting a finger.
(And don’t even get me started
on the shit they pull with rainbows.)
This is the Dramatic Weather Agency.
And you love them.
Because they make your life like a movie.
And you love movies.
Never should a sunshower be wasted!