The London heatwave arrived with a crazy storm. It burst in completely uninvited — with lightning, thunder, and an overall enormous ruckus. It arrived in the middle of the night, silently, so much so that I didn’t even notice until the sudden swelling wind blew the smell of it through my open window. Petrichor. The musky smell of the earth, the ground — the literal smell of an incoming storm.
Turns out we humans evolved so far that we can smell geosmin: the very scent of fertile soil, nearby water, and incoming rainfall. All for the sake of survival — but I find it beautiful that we just know something is approaching, something is in the air. Our senses awaken and respond to nature: first we smell the earth, then we see the lightning, and then we hear the thunder. Everything collides and intertwines, and suddenly — explosion, and the sky is already falling.
And all at once I’m flying back through time, twenty years to the past, back to my childhood, and I’m sitting on the terrace of our old home, watching summer storms for hours on end. Dark clouds above, my mom's geraniums and a myriad of other plants around me. Sometimes I just sat there with my notebook in my lap, seeing but not looking at anything in particular, gaze unfocused. Maybe I was waiting for inspiration to hit, or maybe I was just being present, existing in the moment. Carefree, worry-free, contemplating how easy and good life is. June always brought a lot of unexpected storms and downpours, and so, ever since then, early summers always arrive with a sense of nostalgia. I can’t explain why, or what exactly I’m missing: is it my childhood, or is it being content and free? Am I missing that certainty that only a child can have — that feeling of utter trust that everything is going to be okay, that I am taken care of?
I’m sitting in my bedroom and I’m listening to the pouring rain, and it sounds like the sky has fallen. I like the sound of it: the sound of utmost chaos, the unstoppable force of nature — the very energy that created this storm created me as well. And so, I’m not separate from it. And so this means it is also within me, and is me. And it reminds me that there is chaos within me, that I can destroy and ravage too, that I also have century-old rage and pain inside me — and that is mine and mine alone. No one can touch it or take it. I just have to tame it, or let it out sometimes, and then everything will be alright. The question is how — and what do I do with it.
I’d like to think that these past years I learned the how. Not by my own free will, but this is what an awakening will do to you. You will learn alchemy. You will learn how to alchemise — how to consciously transform energy, and convert it to something new. You have this quintessential destructive force inside, but you know that this chaos is gold, and so you learn how to transmute it and create with it, instead of destroying. This is what happens in nature, and this is what we can learn to do as well.
I learned there’s a Mayan word for “rain and storm,” or “lightning”: kawoq. It’s a day sign in the sacred Mayan calendar, one of the twnety, and it represents the storm not as a destructive power, but as life-giving. Just like the divine feminine power, just like nature — it’s caring, nurturing, abundant. Necessary destruction for the sake of rebirth, for the sake of new beginnings. I know this because I was born on a kawoq day, and maybe that’s why I’m so drawn to storms, and disturbance, and mess and chaos. Because I can see the potential. I can see that some storms are necessary — in life as well, borderline unavoidable — because after the downpour comes the start over. The transformation. The healing.
That’s what happened to me after my spiritual awakening, and that’s what’s still happening. Right now, as I’m sitting in my room, listening to the rain pouring and the thunder — remembering, realising, understanding, and feeling. Feeling that there’s a bigger picture, that there’s a meaning, that there’s the certainty I had been looking for, for 20 years now. I’m sitting in that same worry-free, carefree present moment. There are storms inside me that I know how to alchemise now, and there are storms around me I can’t control — but I don’t even need to. I just need to trust. Trust that they will pass. And that in their wake, something new will spring. That’s the best part.
And just like that, I’m already looking for the next time the smell of petrichor hits my nose.
