Monday, June 22, 2009

When flowers rained from the sky at a lonely location

The Atlas of Curiosities: Part 14

Outside of a small town in Iowa, we walked down a long country road.  It was morning, and the weather was fair, birds flew across the street no doubt preferring that side to this side. Continuing down the road, we encountered a middle aged man waiting at a bus stop.  We stood next to him, certain that the bus would take us someplace more interesting than where we already were.  As we waited, an astonishing precipitation began.  Before our very eyes, delicate flowers began to fall from the sky.  Stunned, we ran from where we were, first gathering the flowers, then attempting to catch them, then, fearfully, attempting to discern their origin. We squinted into the pale blue morning light in an attempt to discover their cause, but seeing that they fell as if from the air itself, we asked our host to inquire of the local man as to an explanation.

“Don’t rightly know,” was the reply, and the man resumed tapping the keys of his mobile phone.

“What could he mean!?” we implored our host. Did the man not see that there were flowers falling from the thin air around him? Were our eyes deceiving us?  Were we mad?

“You’re not crazy,” the man said without looking up. “They fall most every day.  I’ve gotten used to it.  They’re a slight nuisance is all.”

A nuisance!? In all our travels, never had we seen something so extraordinary as this….this apparition of divine grace. 

“Is strange now that you mention it,” said the man.  “I suppose I don’t see them anywhere else.”

At this time, the rain of flowers slowed then ceased, and the bus pulled up.  The man put his phone in his pocket and climbed aboard.  The bus’ wheels whined, and the vehicle departed leaving us standing on an empty road with a faint smell of petrol lingering in the air.

“The man is a buffoon,” we remarked.  “How unmoved is he by life that he would look at his phone as a miracle occurred before his eyes.”

“Look into the sky,” our host said.

We did.

“What do you see?” our host asked.

“Nothing,” we said.  “clouds, the morning star.”

Our host stood in silence for a moment.

“Write him down as saying this:” our host said at last. “Ah, how heavy is the everyday.”

We sat, and committed what we had seen and heard to our records.  In an hour another bus arrived, spiriting us away.