Vivid memory from the road.

We were driving into the chaos that is the interstate entering Memphis right around sunset. The sky was filled with thunderheads. I looked out the window and my heart skipped a beat.

Anyone who knows me knows that I am not a religious or superstitious person. Personally, I consider most religion equivalent to superstition and both equivalent to a defective intelligence-if this offends you, I probably don't care. I don't believe in god, the devil, or any of the rest. But what I saw from the interstate was astounding: a thunderhead, lit from the sunset in such a way that it appeared to be the head of some horned and fanged beast that was snarling at the ground underneath, lit from below by a red light that looked startlingly like the light put off by a lava flow, and as I stared, a light (yes, a plane taking off) taking forever to rise through this thunderhead, some brilliant jewel flying out of hell. I don't think those tabloid photos of "satan in the clouds around whatever" are complete forgeries anymore, and I now understand, perhaps, at least part of what makes the southern Mississippi valley the buckle of the bible belt. Nowhere else in my life have I felt the presence of dichotomous nature as much as crossing that river under that sky, and if I did it daily, I might very well seek some explanation beyond that of nature itself.