Yesterday was a strange one, here in Melbourne. Weatherwise that is. I left home before dawn. In the half light, the wind was warm, strong, gusting; the clouds dynamic and rendered in blood-red and black by the sun about to rise. I'm an elemental person, strongly affected by the weather. I felt alive, exposed and apprehensive.
Later, 40km from home in the city centre, we had a bit of storm: a flash of lightning and, half a second later, thunder that shook the office; then rain, which was whipped horizontal by the wind.
By midday, the entire city and suburbs was blanketed by what I think was a mixture of smoke from nearby fires and dust from hundreds of kilometres north. It was like a dirty, brown, smog, visibility was perhaps a bit over 1 kilometre and it was dark in the same way as when storms come in winter. Back home last night it was still the same: warm, gusty wind and irritating brown air.
None of it was spectacular enough to suggest the end of the world, but it was deeply disquieting, being mindful of what was about to transpire on the other side of the world. It didn't seem so much an omen, as an echo forward in time, synchronicity at work. Was this the kind of sky those poor people would be waking up to, filled with fire and smoke and soot?
And then this morning it was all gone. The rain had come and gone, the air was moist and clear and cool. I felt better too, after my first semi-decent night's sleep in a week.
Is today too an echo forward in time? Or was yesterday a flash, a vision, that's now gone?
5:17:49 PM 
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