Revisiting: Temperature Variations, Creativity, and Weather Words

This time of year, this image is wishful thinking!

I wrote this little treatise on weather words a long time back. Since everyone is currently suffering weather extremes, it seemed a good idea to 'revisit' the issue. Just for fun...

Somewhere in the infinite gyrating cornucopia of song and story, tale and account, saga and romance that is the substance of myth, it was bandied/broadcast/broached about that Dragons love heat. Hot. Burning, boiling, sizzling, searing Heat! I don't know who first claimed this to be a fact/truth/non-lie, but I can attest as to the accuracy of the belief: NOT! 

Some Dragons, to be sure, do enjoy basking in sunshine, baking in warm sand, sprawling in the ebullient effervescent whirl of a hot tub...well, OK, even I enjoy such endeavors. But true heat--the blazing, baking oppressive heat of a Texas summer--ouch! 

S'not to say that I prefer cold. Should the temperature drop below 60 my toes freeze. Literally makes my great claws tremble. I prefer temperatures in the 70's, a nice middle/ central/in-between warmth. A centric mercury measure of sun tickled molecules. Makes for happy scales, happy toes, and a happy, more creative brain. When the temperature bumps up into the 80's, the brain and body still manage to perform, but not with quite the same alacrity as it does when it's 10 degrees cooler. Into the 90's... everything smolders, and I don't mean just my gullets and internal juices. S'hard to think, create, motivate when heat depletes ye olde energy! Once the silver, scintillating mercury blob bubbles into the three digits, it's all over. Tail drags, wings droop, ears sag, everything shuts down in protest. Not a creative spark in sight!

Which is why this olde Dragon worships conditioned air. Bless the HVAC. My cave is completely habituated to appease my humongous but sensitive self. Dries sweat, lets blood flow normally, perks up the heartbeat, invigorates the brain cells and the creative spark re-energizes. Flares, sparkles, gleams. At such times one can write or paint or craft or count their treasure trove. A great chance to imagine, think, apply, react, DO! 

If you're a writer/ speaker/teller of stories, the words associated with the vagaries of weather can be a succulent wealth of, well--Words! Here's a bit of Dragon advice: use that wealth to enrich your tales with most excellent/ marvelous/wondrous and varied descriptions. 

Rain is not just rain, but a roiling storm. A wind whipped tempest. A cloud stampede. An innervating inundation. A streaming squall, a horrific, harried hurricane, a galloping gale. Light rain is a shimmering mist, a cooling sprinkle, a dusting of moisture...dreamy, sleepy, refreshing. One can reach into the cloud shower and capture droplets, fling them in a shining spray, glitter the drops on metal and wood and leaves and fur... 

Heat turns the droplets to vapor, fog, shifting haze, miasma, murk. 

Winter Ice Crystals by yeimaya

Cold turns the droplets to frost, ice, rime, flakes, silvery and white and pale and pallid, with blue shadows, deep ice glow and variegated undulations of light on frozen surfaces. 

Don't you love/adore/ admire the flights of fancy so readily available in the mere serendipitous spew of weather relative verbiage?

If hot, stay cool. If cold, hug a heater. Once comfortable, savor the flavor of the elements, suck them in, spit them out, color and texture the visual display of your thoughts/ imagination/dreams as you place them on paper, papyrus, clay tablets or whatever writing paraphernalia you choose. Enjoy the summer wherever you are, but remain creative! Write!  Or Paint! Or Sing a Song...s'all in the joy of the doing.

The Dragon has spoken...