It’s been over a month since the deluge on the night of Thursday, May 26th. It is now July 5th. What did I do? What did I write. What’s next? My blog entry for May 26th, hours before the flood, was titled The Tao: Seeing Path, Polarity, and Pattern in Today’s Events. Mind you this is before the flood.
My thoughts on the subject of Path touch on current controversial topics, touching first on Second Amendment rights, the future rumble of crumbling infrastructure, empty calories sold cheaply, cheap textiles emptied into rich countries made fully by slave labor, and burgeoning poverty in a country of bludgeoning wealth. The clouds moving in considered my rights subservient; our crumbling infrastructure a mere morsel; those empty calories a trite consideration, our excess clothing, while cheap textiles, would soon be wet absorbents; and the country’s poverty and wealth to be nearly the same in the eye of the storm. Water always seeks the path of least resistance. Water when filling the ten foot banks of a creek, twelve inches in two hours, rises from eight inches to fifteen feet in two hours. Water, when you are standing over it, may be looked down upon at dusk but will have you on your knees before you can say, “Syndee, we gotta get outa here.”
On May 27th, I wrote a morose piece titled the difficulties of genuine friendship. The three paragraphs were written in third person, a thinly veiled reflection of an old man who came to an ugly spot in a pretty town to build a homely farm on a scarred land. A devastating flash flood wiped five years of toil away, brought him not to pity but wonder at why he attempted this endeavor. Some how, he concluded, it was done for approval. Even though he was mostly alone, occasionally he would be with company and listen to others who would drone on about their stagnant past or current impasse. He sat and listened – listening for approval. Somehow, he hoped his father would listen and he would hear his approval, too.
This study of the May 27th article will be longer than the piece itself. It takes a lot to get one to admit to a lie, even a small one, a partial one, one that only harms oneself. But mother nature’s waterboarding can bring the most dedicated liar to tell the truth about himself. Piling dead animals into plastic barrels for feasting maggots does something to one’s poor phony posture, unless of course that is one’s chosen vocation. Sitting in rising stench, waiting for Help to justify whether to show, with standing water smelling the sweetness in the air of the next storm, which will arrive on schedule, the flood victim is forced to think how he got here – but quickly! Remembering accomplishments, small and large, which are now downstream; looking at the crooked path the phases of this farm took; feeling the joy of victory and the agony of defeat, in turn, as the breeze turns the now high grass from sheen to dull, from hope to despair. It could be that this old guy felt in his stomach the nausea of descent into hopelessness. Yet, he did not. There was some reason that this deluge brought exciting hope on its cruel waves. New possibilities with the beliefs of strangers who showed up with genuine faith. Considerable potential brought to a place where potential for flourishing was fading. Consider the possibilities and the potential.
On May 30th I wrote Feelings After the Flood. I feel nothing I blogged. True in the sense of understanding or acknowledging my feelings at that time. I did reveal my paradox for stoic posturing with pain and emotional vulnerability to compassion. I paid homage to Mother Nature and undeniable need to look at the future with a more focused lenses. My tactics got me an egg business, some holiday turkeys, a lesson in goat worm-ology, and great vegetables and greater weeds watered by a flood of sweat. The flood was a sign. A sign for change. A change that will be great but that will leave none of the great people in my life behind. Though some people will have to be left behind. When Mother Nature is seeming to be apathetic toward you, she is actually giving you time to prepare for her wrath. When you are sitting bored in your recliner on a rainy night, she might be measuring the distance her flood will have to rise to wet your lazy ass. The knocking outside your door may not be the Mother coming for you. But it might. Will you find high ground before She does? Do you hate the rain so much you think you can hide from the following waves? If you are carried away, where do you suppose She will deposit you. Do you deserve it?