Monday 10-10+19
Back to Somewhere after yesterday's Sunday, we are on schedule to pack and move tomorrow, from Somewhere to a condo a few miles west, further up and further in, as Aslan would have it, from the place I love; which begins as one crosses The Bridge heading east on US98. Larger, that next beachfront hurrication condo is reserved to be our home through November. Sunsets there will surely be as nice.
Commenting a day or few ago, a friend does not understand the depth of my ongoing feelings about what has been done to Bay County, Panama City and surrounding territory, to the land and people here, to us personally, and to me. Not sure, but I think I may have used the word ineffable in my expressions, because my feelings are inexpressible to me, I do not understand my own self, how personally I am taking what comes to me as betrayal, treachery, sheer, outright evil in the nature of Creation, even as I theologically understand the Bible story of Job, and realize the absurdity of how personally I take this as we drive into and around town; and we've not yet even driven further eastward across the Glenn Bridge and on into the epicenter, where Michael's eyewall came through, the most outrageous, enraging of it.
This "is enough to make a preacher cuss, ain't it" I remember from late summer 1951, spoken by the busdriver of a Greyhound or Trailways bus that had arrived at Camp Weed to pick up campers heading home, as he and our beloved Bishop Juhan squatted down looking at the hopelessly flat tire, a bunch of us campers crowded around looking on. "Not our Bishop," I thought naively well more than half a century before October 10, 2018 and counting. garalmightydenia.
The depth of it - - why? Still ineffable, but something about feelings for this place I grew up loving, knowing it was, of all places, the best in the world for me - - even still after time in SanFrancisco, Seattle, and Sydney. The offense is personal, psychic, theological. Maybe there's a word for a place that's more than physical home; something with spiritual sense, maybe like Jerusalem to a Jew. Or whatever people felt a little of when they came here and "got sand in their shoes" and realized they had to relocate here. Panama City, our area, is loaded with Air Force folks who, having served a tour at Tyndall, had to come back to stay; yet even they cannot understand where I am. All my Navy years, which in retrospect I would never do again because it was years away from home, I felt myself a yo-yo, out and back, out and back, more than a dozen duty stations in those twenty years, but always coming back to Panama City for as long as possible between duty stations, and always when on leave except the three years in Japan and the two years in San Diego; and always with the understanding between us, that in Time we would return to stay and forever. Maybe one has to be a Panama City native, as, born here, I am and have been for more than 83 years, to feel this way, and to hurt this deeply every time I drive into the desolating and permanent change. Or, as Lorrie Morgan sang 25 years ago,
Well, I guess you had to be there
Yes, you really had to be there
Some things you just can't explain
It's just not the same
I guess you had to be there
Commenting a day or few ago, a friend does not understand the depth of my ongoing feelings about what has been done to Bay County, Panama City and surrounding territory, to the land and people here, to us personally, and to me. Not sure, but I think I may have used the word ineffable in my expressions, because my feelings are inexpressible to me, I do not understand my own self, how personally I am taking what comes to me as betrayal, treachery, sheer, outright evil in the nature of Creation, even as I theologically understand the Bible story of Job, and realize the absurdity of how personally I take this as we drive into and around town; and we've not yet even driven further eastward across the Glenn Bridge and on into the epicenter, where Michael's eyewall came through, the most outrageous, enraging of it.
This "is enough to make a preacher cuss, ain't it" I remember from late summer 1951, spoken by the busdriver of a Greyhound or Trailways bus that had arrived at Camp Weed to pick up campers heading home, as he and our beloved Bishop Juhan squatted down looking at the hopelessly flat tire, a bunch of us campers crowded around looking on. "Not our Bishop," I thought naively well more than half a century before October 10, 2018 and counting. garalmightydenia.
The depth of it - - why? Still ineffable, but something about feelings for this place I grew up loving, knowing it was, of all places, the best in the world for me - - even still after time in SanFrancisco, Seattle, and Sydney. The offense is personal, psychic, theological. Maybe there's a word for a place that's more than physical home; something with spiritual sense, maybe like Jerusalem to a Jew. Or whatever people felt a little of when they came here and "got sand in their shoes" and realized they had to relocate here. Panama City, our area, is loaded with Air Force folks who, having served a tour at Tyndall, had to come back to stay; yet even they cannot understand where I am. All my Navy years, which in retrospect I would never do again because it was years away from home, I felt myself a yo-yo, out and back, out and back, more than a dozen duty stations in those twenty years, but always coming back to Panama City for as long as possible between duty stations, and always when on leave except the three years in Japan and the two years in San Diego; and always with the understanding between us, that in Time we would return to stay and forever. Maybe one has to be a Panama City native, as, born here, I am and have been for more than 83 years, to feel this way, and to hurt this deeply every time I drive into the desolating and permanent change. Or, as Lorrie Morgan sang 25 years ago,
Well, I guess you had to be there
Yes, you really had to be there
Some things you just can't explain
It's just not the same
I guess you had to be there