The Spaces Between Time

There is a great, unsettled air surrounding a storm no matter how tame or fierce it may be. Before it rolls in one often hears a comment or two about it. Where I live- Australia- it is a common thing to relish its approach. Though, that rarely seems a thought to last even here. As it moves in, the windows are to be shut, the outdoor furnishing to be tied down, the pets to be brought in, the doors to be shut, and all manners of safety procedures to be enforced. The actions taken speak louder than the words given. They speak of a sense of impending possibility... a possibility not so fondly thought of.
Then it happens. The tide of the winds washes in and rains itself against the gum trees outside- quite literally bending them more than seems normal to the layman, I suppose. A thousand, million droplets of rain strike every surface around and that is when the smallest of beautiful things start to happen.
I was in a car. We were travelling home. The storm was just past its peak. We were halfway there.
Amidst all the ugly darkness of the pseudo-night of the billowing dark clouds in the sky, I found myself looking out of the window- transfixed not by what was happening outside... but by the water on the glass before my view.
It runs, you see... as the car moves, it runs and in such a mesmerisingly, artsy fashion too. It's as if the clouds themselves see the glass as a canvas and they paint with the laws of the universe. It's an ever-evolving movement of running droplets of water moving like the children of rivers curving to meet up and forming a network in an elaborate dance. It is a dance of something indescribable in its beauty and I was struck by it as I always have been. I stared at it for as long as it remained. I wanted that moment to last. It took my breath away without taking any oxygen. It stopped me breathing without affecting my lungs. It was a frozen piece of forever that didn't last... a space between time.
The rain died. The water slowed to a halt. The car pulled up. We were home.
The sun had broken through and it was setting, though a great dark still remained. I got out of the car. I walked inside. That was it... at least it was until something happened shortly after that I would sell my soul, if it truly were a thing, to live through again.
A few hours after arriving home I had been working in the study and I decided I'd had enough of the blinds being down. So I pulled them up and stopped.
Beauty is a fickle term. I have never known what others consider it to be but I attribute it to a feeling and in describing that moment I can explain the feeling perfectly.
It starts in your senses. It comes from a touch, a taste, a sound, a smell, and of course... a sight.
A nebula of the sky- the light of a star bursting across the world around in a fashion unlike anything else I had ever seen was what I saw and it took my breath away. It was a light that danced against the puddles in the street outside- that glittered in every single drop of water that rested on the leaves on all the flora... the flora. Words cannot describe what had happened to them and it was as if reality itself had broken to bring to life a sight: so wonderful. What was green was no longer merely green. It was the colour of life and that had no name but only words to describe it that do it no justice: vibrant, effervescent... vivid.
I could not believe it. I went outside. I cared not for shoes. I cared not for dirt nor water. I needed that moment. I needed every fibre of it and I would not waste a single second on my journey to bask in a moment in time that seemed to tear from me the every word of the English language- that seemed to rip from me as it did my breath like a vacuum, my very ability to think.
It was magical. The sky was lit with a rainbow of only the colours of the sun and it blasted through the clouds so much so that they seemed to glow with warmth.
And I said aloud in a breath of awe-struck wonder, "Wow."
It is these moments. These spaces between time, that one would imagine people dream of immortality because of. It's these little crevices amidst the happenings of greater things that are what makes our planet what it is: beautiful. These stars that dance in a static jiration of splendiferous patterns- that dot the air above from eternities away, or the way the moon gently caresses the early morning sky as the blue of day breaks against the heavens above; these creatures big and small that exist as they do in ways that boggle the mind; these passions that we feel, the loves that we encounter, the wisdoms we face, and the great stories we hear and tell- the smallest things and the grandest designs, they are beautiful not because of what they are but because of what made them... and that maker is always in some way, shape, or form: Earth.
Earth is the giver of our lives. Beauty exists because of life's ability to perceive it. It is a subjectivity that stems from our being and our being is rooted in Earth and stops at Earth.
I'm not a fond lover of people. There is no doubt in my mind, however, that I love Earth.