Fri Aug 8 4:56 AM
It's fuzzy, not at all a great shot, but the moon was setting and I had to move fast to catch it before it sank into the bank of clouds low on the western horizon beyond the high-rise towers on Thomas Drive.
It should be maybe 99% illumination tonight, and a full moon rising tomorrow, Saturday evening.
Inside now, but a mug of hot & black outside on the porch earlier as I watched a lightning display in clouds to my south far beyond Shell Island out over the Gulf, and stretching all the way round to over the tall building that's the paper mill remnant east of 7H. That old building remnant needs to come down, but it may take explosives to bring it down safely and neatly.
Going outside with coffee in predawn blackness, I take my phone/camera along, not just for photographs if there's something worth snapping, but to shine the light into my coffee mug and check for bugs before each sip. We have few to no insects up here on the seventh floor, but now and then. This morning I flicked something moving off the top of my head, then picked up my mug for a final sip of coffee only to see a fly struggling on the surface. Our HOA has a lot of rules here, and it's against the rules to throw anything over the balcony railing, but I did pour the last little bit of cool-by-then & black over: maybe Mr. Fly managed to take to flight on his way down? IDK.
Breakfast: six flavor bomb cherry tomatoes that Linda buys somewhere, then half a sandwich each of steelhead trout & mayonnaise, and chicken salad & mayonnaise, both on Pepperidge Farm's very thin sliced whole wheat bread. Ice water in my rinsed-out coffee mug.
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As you reach your nineties you may find, as I am doing, that not only Life Itself is moving faster and faster, but also Awareness along with it. I've long had a permanent place to keep my keys, and one for my wallet, when we're here at home in 7H. So, they seldom get lost. My cellphone is another thing altogether, a real problem for me. Except in church on Sunday morning, I leave it on to ring, so when I lose it it's usually possible to find it by ringing it from Linda's phone, although I never remember to turn the ringer back on until Tuesday or Wednesday. But I try to keep it with me and not have to chase around and find it when it's ringing, which is not working for me, I keep leaving it places: on restaurant tables, in the pew at church, in the grocery shopping cart, on the counter at the oyster bar, in the car that's parked downstairs in the garage, on the chair next to me at the doctor's office. I can't keep up with the blasted thing. So I'm thinking, hey! George Washington got along without a cellphone, Ike Eisenhower got along without a cellphone, my father got along without a cellphone, I too could get along without a cellphone, nomesane?
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Watching the news. That is to say, news that interests me and that I select to watch or read on my computer desktop. Except when there's a hurricane involved, I don't watch television news because I like to choose for myself what's "news" to me. Israel planning to occupy the Gaza Strip, for example. Considering that Hamas refuses to lay down their aim of killing every Jew and eliminating Israel even if it costs the life of every Palestinian, if I were Israel, I also would occupy Gaza militarily, indefinitely. For other countries to call on Israel to stop the fighting when Hamas has no intention of stopping the fighting, is ridiculous, is nonsense, is not the way of human warfare.
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But, again yea unto boredom, humans are no different from ants, neighboring anthills warring with each other. We humans are the next mass extinction event, already in process. Some damn fool relishing his power will press a button and all hell will ensue and several million years from now something like intelligent rats, roaches, or ants will try to figure out what was left behind by some ancient beings. Things long disintegrated and grown over by grass, weeds, and creeping vines, and Thomas Hardy will be right - - "The Earth, say'st thou? The Human Race? By Me created? Sad its lot? Nay. I have no remembrance of such place. ... "
Brian Cox could be right: our civilization on Earth as just one moment in the incomprehensible immensity of Time among countless trillions of planets in solar systems among the two trillion galaxies in Creation's observable universe.
We were here as stewards, to tend the garden, be fruitful and multiply, and have dominion: how's it going?
T89&c