The Weather in 1000 Words
Excercise:
I’m using ChatGPT to give me some writing prompts per week and I’m writing them at my own pace. The goal is to develop my own style of writing and to become a more proficient writer. Helping me learn from mistakes I may make before I go to publish something. I hope you enjoy! Please feel free to give me feedback or to leave a comment below.
Task: Write a 1000-word description of a weather event (rainstorm, snowstorm, heatwave, etc.) as it unfolds. Focus on sensory details: sight, sound, smell, and touch.
Criteria for Self-Evaluation:
Use of sensory details: Did you effectively include at least three senses?
Avoiding clichés: Did you describe the weather in a fresh way, without relying on overused phrases (e.g., “It was raining cats and dogs”)?
Engagement: Does the description create a vivid, immersive experience for the reader?
Rain
Isn’t it weird, how rain makes us wet? You’d think that we are one with the world, universe and everything in-between. How we are made. How we connect. It doesn’t matter what you believe, you can’t deny the magic that occurs everyday. The energy that flows through us, flows through everything else. Surges within each blade of grass, within each raindrop, each cloud. That’s why it falls.
The rain splatters on the ground, coming down straight from above. The stale warm air is static as my movement through it is the only things that disturbs. My clothes cling to my body making me shift my shirt uncomfortably. I can barely see where I’m walking. The mist is encapsulating.
Am I a disturbance? Do I irritate the natural cycle? “The ancient things here before me.
I step in a puddle deeper than expected. The water quickly sweeps over my entire shoe. I can feel some dirt slipped by.
In order to rise again, the rain must first fall. Just like me… But, am I in the way? Do we all exist but also inhibit each other? Who has the-right to walk their path and should their affect on others be acknowledged?
The humidity rises from the cracks of the deserted pavement hits my chin and makes me sweat as the warm water hits my hair and runs down my face, down my arm. The earthen smell of damp wood sighs out of the forest next to me. I’m alone. Who likes to walk in the rain?
If I close my eyes, I can pinpoint each raindrop and feel it as it slips down my body. Like we are one… But, it’s hard to breathe. This heat is relentless.
How am I in the way? I like the rain. I like the sound it makes, how when rain falls, it never falls alone. The thudding as it hits the ground. The melodies the hanging bells make. The rhythm the puddles perform. It makes me lose myself or perhaps, I―, We, become one.
But how can I be one with something that is wet? When I would eventually require to be dry? When these elements make it difficult for me to breathe and walk through it? The warmth of the fire on my frontside. I can picture it. Switching my body back and forth, front and back, every few minutes, I feel the warmth quickly turn to wet cold. The towel wrapped around me being of little comfort until I turn to face the fire again. I can’t be one with rain when I dream of no longer being wet.
When we swim though, we become one with the water we’ve emerged with. Like the water we’re born into. The water that so gracious surrounds our paradise and the water in the skies; the kind that falls and the kind that guides our heavens. Water is everywhere. It makes up most of our bodies and most of our home, but still I feel as though, I can never be one with it while it’s possible for me to ponder about the difference of our existences.
I stop walking. Finally, I close my eyes. The rain falls hard, pounding my skull. Leaving welts on my arms. It’s finally fighting back. A gust of wind blows over me. It’s freezing. The rain tilts to my right side and I can feel my head unconsciously turn against it to hide my right ear. I lift my face towards the open sky where the rain is falling and I decide to open my mouth. When was the last time I drank the rain?
It’s cold. I’m cold.
Suddenly, a hot light pierces through my eyelids, causing me to squint and cower a little. I spit out the water from my mouth, shake my head and rub my mouth dry. My eyes are finally open. The Sun is peaking through. The clouds are parting. And the rain is stopping.
In just a moment passed and it’s as if the storm was never here at all. If it weren’t for the wet scars on the ground, there’d be no proof at all. Sounds of life return. The birds and insects start their chirps and squeaks almost as if checking on their neighbors. Then it struck me like lightning. I realized, I wasn’t in the way, because there’s no way all that I find beautiful is a nuisance. Everyone has moments that they need to release. The Earth is no different.
In the blink of an eye, the rain that tormented me, making me question my existence, has moved on. Leaving only remnants that will eventually disappear. ‘No hard feelings’ it says… Maybe I should do the same and move on too.
