"Yesterday, an oppressive storm hung over the sky, and I hurried to a neighboring hill...
At the top of the hill I found a hut, where a man was killing two goats while his son
watched him. The storm broke, with a tremendous crash, discharging thunder and hail,
and I had an indescribable sense of well-being and zest...Lightning and tempest are
different worlds, free powers, without morality. Pure Will, without the confusions of
intellect—how happy, how free.”
-Friedrich Nietzsche, 1865, in a letter to a friend
There used to be a place on Highland Street called the Hawaiian Hut, where they had all kinds
of flavored slushy drinks. I remember one time, when I was five, I got a green slushy drink that
was cream-soda flavored, and a green helium balloon. The sky was overcast that day. I remember
someone telling me, hold on tight to the balloon.
Of course, being five, I soon forgot, and let the balloon go. The sky had darkened, the air had
that metallic smell of coming rain, and I remember someone speaking to me, something about the
balloon, but I don't remember what was said or who was speaking. Watching my green ballon against
the gray and dark gray sky, I was transfixed. I wasn't just seeing green and gray and dark gray;
I was experiencing color, like Nietzsche experienced lightning, blood and thunder.
This is what we all look for, I think. We all want something we can lose ourselves in. But nothing
seems matched to us, or worthy. Everything we see outside, doesn't match our inside.
I think, there are no words for that condition and no answer to that dilemma, except to find our own
hilltop, and lightning.
No answer but your own gray sky.
And green balloon.