Wednesday, July 28, 2004

I had an interesting hallucination last night. I had just woken up and was lying in bed. I felt fully awake -- but of course when you're sufficiently tired your mind can make you feel or think just about anything. For what seemed to be about three seconds, two massive, soundless, forking bolts of blue lightning appeared outside my window -- absolutely archetypal lightning bolts that lasted much longer than the real thing, defying the relatively clear night sky.

At first there was no doubt in my mind that I was observing some weird meteorological phenomenon. I wasn't scared, precisely, but I was shaken -- those brilliant blue stalks looked close, and they were unlike any normal lightning I've seen. They looked more like special effects than real lightning, and the lack of thunder made them doubly surreal.

Within moments I was questioning if I'd actually seen them; a few seconds later I'd comfortably filed the "sighting" away as a brief waking dream. But for all of three seconds they'd seemed menacing and all-too-real . . .

I remember once, years ago, waking up to a particularly red dawn sky and, for a paralyzed moment, absolutely believing there had been a nuclear explosion.

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