Once again we have candles in our windows to celebrate and bring light to the season of the longest nights.
I’ve written before about loving this particular aspect of the coming holidays. Between candles in the windows and lights on the tree, I could spend hours just sitting with a good book or a journal, or even with nothing at all but my thoughts, feelings, and memories.
I find it very easy to get lost in the flicker of a flame. Sometimes, I fall even deeper into a reverie when the flame holds eerily still for just enough time to lose track of all time.
Fire
Speaking of loving the flame, I also respect it. I realize just how powerful it is: full of the power to enlighten and also full of power to destroy and lay waste.
I’m reminded of that by the deeply unsettling knowledge that a good friend of mine and her kids were forced to evacuate their home in Southern California again within the past day or so due to uncontrolled wildfire known as the Bond Fire.
I say ‘again’ because they were also evacuated over a month ago as a result of a different wildfire.
There’s a lot going on in so many people’s lives. We all need each other more than ever now.
I’ll admit it: I’m distracted. Karl and I held to our commitment to refrain from watching politics this evening and instead indulged in some back-to-back episodes of Schitt’s Creek. But once 11:00 p.m. rolled around, Karl hit the sheets and I turned the channel from Netflix to cable news, where coverage of Hurricane Laura is dominating the news.
The enormity of the potential destruction this Category 4 hurricane is likely to inflict is hard to fathom. The meteorologist was describing a 20’ storm surge – which, first of all, is basically water as high as a two story building, right? But then he reminded us all that on top of that 20’ storm surge another 10’ of wild waves will be crashing against anything and everything in the storm’s path.
If you ask me, that sounds like the makings of an apocalyptic movie. And that wall of water? The most recent prediction that I heard (just now) is that it could extend as far as 40 miles inland. Forty miles. I imagine people living 40 miles from the coast do not ordinarily expect the sea to reach their doorstep.
Kenosha
And then there’s Kenosha, Wisconsin and the brutal race-related shootings that took place both Sunday night and then last night, too. Jacob Blake – another name we’re going to have to remember. At least it appears he will be able to speak up and speak out on his own behalf, even if he is paralyzed from the waist down (at least temporarily) and sustained grievous injuries to his vital organs. His sister’s statement rocked my world.
I don’t even know what to say about a 17 year old kid from Illinois showing up at a protest in Wisconsin (about Jacob Blake being shot in the back seven times by police) with an AR-57 and blowing two people away. “Only in America?” “Is America great again?”
The Republican Convention
From what little I just saw over the last several minutes, between the other two massive stories, above, it looks and sounds like there’s precious little overlap in realities anymore. That’s scary. But it’s not a scary that makes me sacred. It’s a scary that makes me angry. And determined.
Wild Fires
Oh – and lest we forget, California is battling unbelievably ravaging wildfires sparked by dry thunderstorms. Yes, they’re a thing. And I’m pretty sure there were something like 1100 dry lightning strikes that set the current blazes alight.
Pandemic
And we hit 180,066 – make that 183,653 – deaths from the Coronavirus tonight.
I think I need to stop writing for this evening.
I’m really sorry for being such a downer tonight. I am trying to find my Hope. (Pats pockets. Looks around blankly.) Maybe I left it in my other clothes.
