Lightning!

This is Lightnin’.

She’s a 2 toed choloepus sloth. She’s my dad’s favorite kid, and probably the best looking of all of us.


And this is Lightning!

As seen from my balcony.

Brazil, I have read, has the most lighting of any country in the world. And I have also read that our city tops the records with the most lightening in the country. That makes us the Lighting Capital of the World!

It’s pretty scary actually.

Last night and tonight starting at about 7pm these amazing storms rolled in from the horizon. You could see the lightening from way off coming at you. It made the clouds glow red and light up from the inside.

By the time the storm got close to us we were running like crazy to not only shut all the windows but to unplug every possible fry-able thing in the house.

Last night, when I took the above picture, (which by the way I am extremely proud of – have you ever tried to take a picture of lightening? You gotta be a quick draw!) we turned the lights off in the apartment to watch the show and sat by the glass sliding door ohhhhing and awwwing at the lightning that was still a bit off in the distance. The thunder claps were loud and exciting and fun. Good times.

But tonight, I was alone when the storm hit. C was still working. I was actually trying to meditate in my usual spot in front of the glass sliding door, and these brilliant flashes kept lighting up my closed eye lids. I thought maybe I was actually getting somewhere serious in my meditation (heavenly lights, epiphanies and such) until the thunder clapped so loud it about knocked me off my pillow (that actually could have been Dharma nose diving into my lap.)

I opened my eyes and the storm was literally right on top of us. We live on the top floor apartment on top of a hill, and when these storms roll in we really get up in the clouds. So when I say on top of us, I mean the lighting was hovering at eye level. I sat there stunned until at one point the whole sky turned GREEN with the discharge and the electricity on the street shorted out for a second.


I leapt up, ran around doing the usual ripping of plugs out of the walls and then returned to sit by the door (with Dharma on my lap trying to climb inside my shirt – you’d think she was raised by kangaroos) to watch the show. But I almost couldn’t. It was just too intense. I actually screamed out loud a couple of times and freaked out when I could feel my hair lifting up with the electrical discharge. The sound of the thunder that close is just too much. It gets inside of you and rattles your internal organs. That must be what it’s like to be a drummer in the bateria in the samba schools.