The Tree Fell & Everybody Heard It

 

Last Night I Dreamed Of Snakes

 Rarely do I remember a dream this distinctly.

In the dream I was standing in a street - just off the sidewalk a foot or so, not in the center of the street.

And I was watching a large snake, maybe six feet long and about as thick as a spray paint can, crawling it's way up the sidewalk with what looked like a pastry in it's mouth - like, a maple bar or some such treat.

I watched as the snake crawled up to a patch of grass at the end of the sidewalk and joined three other snakes that were also holding pastries in their mouths.

All four of the snakes were about the same size, and they were lined up parallel to one another as if in some snake military formation.

As I looked at the snakes one of them dropped the pastry that it was holding and looked over to me and said, "These pastries are not yours, they are ours."

And that was it, the whole dream that I had last night, or at least what I recalled with an odd clarity when I woke up this morning.

The Big Storm On The Night Of August 22nd Over The Eastern Plains Of Colorado (& Western Plains Of Kansas)

   Driving northbound along a two lane county road somewhere near the Colorado / Kansas border last Saturday night, and in the distance looking west I could see a thunderstorm actively forming on the far horizon.

   As the storm was to the west and I was driving north, I decided to pull over and watch the storm as it rolled across the prairie -  it looked like it was going to be fairly big and powerful, and it might be worth trying to get a few lightning pics.

   Bolts of lighting shot from the heavy, low-lying clouds that hung over the Prairie as I got out of the car to find a good spot to take pics with my cell phone camera. It was still hot - the temp had hit the mid '80's in the afternoon, and it was still in the mid '70's when I pulled over.

   As I was primarily interested in the electrical activity of the storm and how the lightning bolts lit up the clouds (and the pitch black Kansas night) I really didn't notice anything else about the storm.

   The low rumble of thunder could be heard in the distance, and by my calculations (...one Mississippi, two Mississippi...all the way up to 70 Mississippi's, then divide by 5...) I was at least 15 miles from the storm.

     It wasn't raining where I parked, and the wind was very mild, so I did not give any thought to being caught in a downpour or anything like it. I just stood outside the car and took picture after picture, hoping to catch lightning.

   Mostly I only saw and got pictures of the flashes - all the bolts seemed to be either behind, above, or in the storm itself.

   There were a few single bolts every few minutes though, and I did get a few shots of those, which I discovered after I got back in the car to review the shots I had taken.

   I also discovered something else in the pictures though, something a lot less visually appealing, at least to me.

   What I was seeing, or at least thought I was seeing, was a funnel taking shape in the middle of the thunderstorm

   The intensity of the storm seemed to increase a little as I sat back in the driver's seat and reviewed the pics I had just taken, and even though I was still calculating the storm to be at least 10 to 15 miles away, I was getting a bit concerned with what I saw forming - at this point I was 100% sure it was a funnel.

   Not only was a funnel forming, the clouds appeared to getting closer to the ground, and the lightning was getting brighter with every crackling bolt.

   The bolts of lightning also started moving horizontally, becoming sheet lightning, an indication that the storm had become a severe thunderstorm - which is where tornadoes are formed.

   Not good.

   

   It was clearly time for me to skedaddle, which was made more apparent in the next few seconds as the blots of lightning started turning the night into day.

   The bolts that didn't light up the entire horizon revealed that the clouds were getting lower and lower still. Like an idiot rubbernecker passing a fender-bender, I started out driving away from the storm slowly, and all the while nervously looking back.

   I was acting like an adrenaline junkie, feeding off my own fear.

   It is bizarrely riveting watching a severe electrical storm raging full on. It took all of my will to focus on the road ahead and start driving away from what could be a potentially life-threatening dangerous situation.

   There was clearly a funnel taking shape out there, and it was getting closer to the ground with every passing second.

   The flashes were also becoming brighter and bigger - my calculations for the storms distance from me were now in the 5 to 10 miles range. This was shaping up to be almost as fear-inducing a storm as the one BWB and I drove through in '03, when we were returning to Colorado from a day trip to Alliance, Ne.

   I'm no storm chaser though, if anything, I'm a storm flee-er.

   As I drove away from the storm it started to rain, at first just with a smattering of heavy drops but within a few short minutes it began to come down hard and fast.

   It wasn't too long until the hard rain turned to pebble sized hail. 

   Visibility became an issue and soon I was literally driving by following the suddenly blurry yellow line that divided the road. I drove like that for about 10 minutes before I was clear of the rain and hail and could actually see the road. 

   It was another 10 minutes or so before my heart stopped beating like Keith Moon attacking his toms and I could breathe regularly again.

   

Reflecting Upon A Brief Relationship Between Two Financial Anarchists Who Like To Play Banjo Kazooie

He's prone to handing poor downtrodden sods a dollar

Because he's a deep believer in faith, hope, and charity

                                                  Those are the rudimentary requirements, he swore

        To living a righteous, deliberate and unrehearsed life

He's been walking the straight and particularly narrow

Ever since he heard the great and glorious word

                                      That saved him from the evils of pilates and acting

         Elevating his consciousness from banality and strife

He whistles while he works and listens to Marlowe

All the while calculating how long it would take him

                      To memorize all the lyrics on Angelic 2 The Core by Feldman

       While cutting through a frozen banana with a rusty butter knife

                                           Ooh Mao Mao

                                        Zedong Mao Mao

                               Falling asleep on the dance floor 

                                    Bicycling to Pao Pao

She's got him on at least three charges of using trigonometry

To seduce a thrice-divorced matron he met at the automat

                                             A woman of high-standing though low morals

         Who claimed to be great in geocaching but really lousy as a wife

She's been known to use caressing a well-used cheeseboard 

As a means to gathering insights while meditating

                                 Being as how it had been cleaned with potato whiskey      

         By an under-assistant barber found running down a Saharan saif

She cannot afford to be out in public without her trusty blue apple

It helps to soothe her mind when she's feeling a little saudade

                            Like a butterfly she deftly plays the hydrocrystalophone   

        Much to the delight of both the woefully wealthy and offensively rife 

                                             Ooh Mao Mao

                                         Zedong Mao Mao

                            Falling asleep on the dance floor

                                      Bicycling to Pao Pao

                 

It's National Photography Day! Whoo-Hoo!

    Yes folks, it is National Photography Day. A grand and glorious day indeed! Somewhat better than National Sneak Some Zucchini Onto Your Neighbor's Porch Day (which was last week, btw), but not quite as noteworthy as International Whiskey Day (that's March 27th).

   To celebrate, I did what I do most every single day - I took some pictures. Here are a few from my walk around the reservoir this afternoon:

   Slap me on the  ass and call me Galen Rowell.

How Schools Inadvertently (Or With Malicious Subtlety?) Encourage Innocent People To Join Cults*

    It's the class projects.

   That's it, TLDR right at the get go.

   Kids are subdivided into smaller groups and told to work together as a group in order to accomplish a compulsory goal.

   And if you, as a kid, reject the idea of having to be in a group in order to succeed, you are written up for it, as in "doesn't play well with others."

   That right there is the first glowing ember of cult recruitment. 

   As kids progress from grade to grade, the group projects become more and more important grade-wise, and participation is closely monitored.

   "C'mon Jonesy, where's your school spirit?"

   Until, eventually, you are being dinged on your report card for not participating, and in the comments section your teachers start writing "not a team player, does not exhibit a desire to cooperate with others."

   We will teach you how to be one with your fellows indeed.

   At the college level it amps up to eleven making it a graduation requirement, essential to the actual awarding of the degree you so assiduously have been working toward by requiring you to volunteer with some group or other. 

   Of course, the college labels it "community service" and states that it's necessary in order to develop valuable life skills and may even be beneficial for your career progression, but the truth about community service is it's just cult prep.

   Take a look around you and do a little research into how cults recruit, and then tell me I'm wrong.

*Look, I'm being half-assed sarcastic here...let's not take anything I write too seriously, eh? 

A Time & Place Best Not Discussed

The morning walk was going as uneventfully as ever

Until a woman walked up and said "Didn't we know each other in '94?"

In over twenty years of morning walks the total times anyone 

Had ever said anything to him at all

Equaled a grand total of, well, never

Staring intently at her face as if it were an unusual flower

Wondering if maybe she had mistaken him for the guy who lived next door

He repeated the question to himself and replied

"If we did that would mean we were locked up in the same psych ward"

The woman seemed to stop breathing when she heard that 

And then laughing said, "Well, now I'm quite certain that we did."

Which, if you factor in that he now was living seven states from there

Meant that a random coincidence of geography was afoot 

The chances of such a meeting had to be a phenomenal stat

The woman stared at him and realised he was being serious

As he stared right back with almost irrational intensity

Trying to remember a time he had spent years working to forget

Which made his efforts an exercise in futility 

"I must apologise," He said with courteous grace

"For I cannot rightly recall you or your name at this moment"

The space between them seemed to widen a little

And she spoke an apology with a hint of sadness

"My mistake, I thought I recognized your face"

After slight mutual hesitation they both resumed

Their walking in opposite directions on the same path

Both leaving the presence of the other with the same thought

That sometimes it's best not to revisit an old wound