Twister

This morning around 5, I awoke. The sky was white and yet it was night? Like a great fog and then these strobe lights kept trying to beam through. I laid there and watched it, waited for loud claps of thunder, but none (or I fell back asleep). Then came the rain and it tore at the window so hard, I went back to sleep thinking surely this was one of the greatest Northeastern storms yet. It just gets wilder - these four seasons.

Smashing.

Then this morning Sarah and I went to have her MRI done on her foot and it was within walking distance. Once there, the staff was flustered and minimal in number. I asked a question and one young man raised his hand to me and said, "Please, we just got here. I had to walk over the Brooklyn Bridge. There are no trains running because of the tornado."

Tornado?

And then I realized, "ahh, yes, that's what it was." I hadn't seen the ingredients of a tornado since my Dallas days in the 70s and even then none touched down. But this one did. In New York City! Bay Ridge in Brooklyn and Staten Island got the worst of it.

Sarah shook her head and said, "global warming."

But I rode the whole day remembering the flashing lights of a white night.

Definitely a keeper.

Something in me is shifting. I'm nearing the middle of my sabbatical and yet it always feels, everyday, like a new beginning. Yesterday I picked up a book titled, "The 3 am Epiphany: Uncommon Writing Exercises That Transform Your Fiction." That is why Brenda Ueland says the true self is always changing. I've been reading Dr. Wayne Dyer's essays on the Tao. Water runs in the direction of the terrain, going where it must, not forcing, just running into crevices and paths. I do not want to be a pool of water, stagnate.

"When attacked by anger and hate, become the water: fluid and flexible. Water cannot be broken, it changes form effortlessly and is impossible to defeat. It will eventually and always overpower whatever it faces." - Bumbleananda 1434-1535

The peace in me is gaining momentum. The fear growing more and more distant. I am staying in the present and maybe I'll be mowed down, uprooted, or spared, yet, I have no fear. I write and have a schedule and it is coming together.

Minus any claps of thunder.