Chaos and Randomness

There is nothing like wind, rain, hail and natural disasters to show you the profound randomness and transient nature of things. As people in Myanmar and China dig out from unthinkable rumblings of our earth and people around Central Texas look at damaged roofs, cars, broken windoows and toppled trees from our recent storm, we sit here, snug for the moment. We didn't even lose power Wednesday night. (The grocery store where FFP usually shops did, though, and we had to go to a second store for refrigerated and frozen items.)

Everything is like glass before the forces of nature. And the forces of manmade munitions. But someone survives (or has in our known past). (Picture is a detail from a photo taken at Art Works on West Sixth a couple of weeks ago.)

It certainly puts into perspective the uncertainties of moving and getting TV service installed in the new place and getting walls painted a different color. It makes you realize the nice thing about a financial cushion when you watch a shelter being set up in your own community for people without power. "I think I'd check into a hotel," I say. "Uh, yeah," says he. Of course, but for the grace of nature and all that. You never know. Keep your feelings of invulnerability in check, madam. Yes, I will.

Things happend. I'm wondering, by the way, how those palm trees and stuff on the pool deck (ninth floor, west side) of my new home fared in the storm. (It came in from the west and seemed to do the most damage on the west edge of things.) I think they plan to use that area for a grand opening which is, gulp, next Thursday.

Life comes at you fast, as the commercial says. Today I am really, really going to get some things done. Yes, I am. I will have relative duties next week as well as the craziness of all this, um, moving stuff. But at least we have no uprooted trees (at the moment) or broken windows. We aren't buried in rubble or surrounded by cholera-infested waters. There is that.

In the downsizing wars we had trouble filling the garbage can this morning but we scrambled around and found some more stuff to throw away.