a flashing, then quiet

What a great time of day to be up, long predawn for incoming: loud, noisy, brilliant flashing electrical summer thunderstorms over Gulf and Bay. No photographer, I can’t manage to press the button precisely to capture the elegance of lightning streaks that light up sky, land and sea from 7H.

This was and continues a most active week, a nine point three on my tension scale of zero to eleven point seven. Joe leaving and home safely to NC by motorcycle. Deathbed visitation with last rites. Kristen to lunch (Crawdads in Lynn Haven for mullet et al). Visit with Bill and Norman. Kristen to Atlanta. Funeral planning for Saturday afternoon. Linda to clinic for five-yearly invasion and good report. Dryer not working properly, pantry cleared, dryer moved out, diagnosed and corrected. T. Tranströmer rides again. Kristen perhaps driving home today. Failed bloody coup attempt in Turkey. Now this beautifully splendiferous thunderstorm flashing, rumbling, crashing ashore. 

Today complete dryer repair and restore pantry to order, officiate service (see yesterday's blogpost), worry, worry, worry. 

With no idea or thought they knew I was there, this week I went to see Bill, then Norman. Two friends, my brothers, friends whom I loved in this life and helped lay to rest. Not there, they don’t know when or even that I come, no longer needing me though I still need them. Need does lessen, doesn’t it, as Time lengthens into the ages of ages, we discover, experience that. With others lying there a hundred years and more, grasses, bushes and weeds grown up hiding their names, beggar lice and sandspurs brushing and clinging as I make my way among the stones, no one there any longer has needs. Neither death nor sorrow nor crying nor pain

Retirement, this is an interesting Time, of life. Changing, I’m changing. Body disgustingly, but personality, Being. In RealTime I was up all too early, showered, dressed and get the best of the day, never a day got the best of me. Now the Day can go to hell; if the Day gets there first, who cares, I don’t, it’s cool, man, no longer keeping score. What needs doing, jot it down, put it on the list, I’ll get to it, just don’t keep reminding me every six months. 

First signal I was — “slipping” into Type B — quarter century ago: on the floor by the piano at Trinity Church, an electrical outlet without a cover plate. Plastic cover plate kept getting broken. I said “Don’t bother with it, I’ll get a metal plate that won’t break every time the piano rolls over it. “Okay,” says Bedford. Several times a week I glance at the open hole in the floor, I’ll get a round tuit. Six, eight, nine or ten months later in Lowes, it occurs and I buy a metal cover plate, install it. “Thanks,” I tell Bedford, “for your patience with me.” “I thought to fix it,” he says, “but you said you’d do it, and I didn’t want to do what you said you’d do.” Big difference in one who impatiently does what you promised to do and one who lets you get a round tuit. Patience is the thing, tolerance of me.

I’m not a procrastinator, just see no point in getting in a jerk about anything but the Kingdom of God. 

No’m’say’n? 

Pantokrator got me mixed up with somebody else: Bubba lived in the wrong day and age

as once again an early morning thunderstorm goes off insipid and disipates into the dawn, dropless. 

DThos+