Survivor

I survived the typhoon.  This is not my photograph.  It was sent by my travel/art friend.  Last night, we were damn near washed away.  I have no idea how much rain we got, but it was enough to scare me.  Water was running down the slope of my driveway making deep pools near my house where deep pools have never formed in the many, many years I've lived here.  I ran around looking for any possible leaks.  I don't remember seeing rain like this here before.  Maybe I am now living in a vortex, because I've been looking around at the news for any reports.  I have found nothing.  This morning, I can see the results.  I am going to need to make some repairs to the granite driveway.  I'll need to take other precautions for the future, too.

I'm not going to opine about anything today.  Everyone knows what's going on.  Everyone has a take on what it means.  Everyone has longing for a more stable world.  Maybe some even wish for Oz, but unlike Dorothy's voyage, there is no going home.  Thank you Mr. Wolfe.

I stopped by the old studio on my walk yesterday and talked to my artist friend.  He showed me the new work he is doing in glass.  Being inside his studio and looking at his work gave me longing.  It has been five years, I said, since I left this place.  Wow, he said, really?  Yes.  I haven't done any work since.

When I came home, I started clearing out a work space, a small one in the garage, where I might begin doing some of the messy stuff I used to do.  I need to get some lighting for it today.  It is possible that I might actually do something with my time other than sit and stare.  I think it is time to stop my grieving.  Sure, people will say not knowing that from which I've been suffering, not the depth nor the breadth, not the woof nor the weave.  But if you think your lives have changed dramatically, well, I'll tell you that I've suffered more.  I've learned, though, from countless documentaries and stories not to call myself a "victim" but to say "survivor."  That seems to embolden those who feel disenfranchised.

I am kidding, though, about that last part.  It is a joke.  I am neither one of those things.  Your life hinges on the decisions you make.  It is important not to characterize them as good or bad decisions.  Nobody says, "Today, I think I'll make a bad decision."  You do what you think will work at the time and later find out the consequences.  "Oops," you might say, "I shouldn't have sold the heroin/shot that man/killed that dog/stolen the car. . . ."  But you did it because you thought you were making the right choice.  You might say, "I chose to be standing here at the time the thing blew up and blinded me."  Choice.  If you hadn't kissed that boy or girl in the fifth grade, you would have been someplace else.  Butterfly wings and weather, etc.  Every moment of our lives we are making decisions.  Change any of them and your path is slightly altered.  It is hard, but we choose to be where we are at any given moment.

That'll be $100.  I've decided to be a Life Coach.  I think I'm cut out for it.  Let me help you through your pain.  You are not a victim.  You are a survivor.

Now I have to go tend to the choice I made when I bought this house.  The results of that, I mean.