The Storm Speaks: St Stephen's Day Storm - Tipperary

There is a tremendous storm building here... I hope to go out in it later and be buffeted and invigorated by it - to experience what it is to be a Storm. To allow the storm to express itself within me. To become filled by the storm as I expand into the storm. To raise up my arms into the night as if they were the branches of trees. To hear the whirring screaming wind at the centre of my head. In the core of my being. To feel the power of it in my heart and chest. To explode internally, to be blown apart and reassembled as a new me. A catharsis from both within and without. To be washed, baptised by the punching rain. To truly live. To truly love. That's all. To experience those things like storms and darkness and fierce wind that the others are terrified of and avoid...out into the stormy night....I go...I go...

......I ventured out into the farmyard as the storm continued to develop. Such intense energy and sense experience. No allowance for control with a storm. Water whipped up from the puddles in the yard. Water as rain punching me with pins. My face feeling like it's bleeding, my eyes watering up and flowing. Immersed in a water world I stood. The wind the expression of the sound of a waterfall and fountain all in one. I was squeezed upward and downward simultaneously. My body and mind stretched as I struggled to hold on to some semblance of reality... Up? Down? No gravity... Floating, flying in wind in water in spray..... Winded, breathing in short sharp intakes of compressed breath. Cold damp air in. Cold damp air out. Feeling my way in darkness. Shadowy forms flying at me... My tumbling thoughts shimmering within the night as this storm appears within me.....and outside me. A paradox that is truth. Where do I begin? Where do I end? Do I have boundaries? I am an open vessel now... Filling, filling with darkness and wind and water.. Overflowing with this intense energy... Within, without, tick tock, tick tock time disappears I am lifted off my feet and sucked up up up into the swirling darkness. And then some light, a stillness, quiet, unexpected serenity as I transcend the immanence of this experience. The light. The love. At the heart of the storm. Liberation. Acceptance. The storm is. I am. I return to me. Ears whistling. Damp face. Back to the warmth of the fire.......