With all he knew—intellectually—about thunderstorms, he could not face—viscerally—the actuality. Despite the descriptions, the collections of words, the sight in small pictures and on small screens, the sounds captured in recordings; despite all that, he had no idea the flashes were so bright and streaked so across the sky; that the sound was so vibratorily bass in sound when it rattled across a hollow world; that both were so sudden; and that rain could be so like an inverted bowl of water, endlessly pouring.
