Seeking Serenity

The driveway of every house on our street that isn’t burned down has a repair truck of some kind it it. In our case it is the distinctive lime green Serve-Pro truck with its trailer of water and chemicals with which to power wash our house and patio.

The street itself is full of cable company trucks and the most homicide inducing droning, vacillating sound...added into the sound of generators from up and down the street, it can only be described as some sort of exquisite torture dreamed up by Dick Cheney and his cronies....

I decided to flee before it was I who ran amok and joined my friends at Cafe Frida for coffee. Conversation turned, as it predictably does, to what next? If we move out of here, where will we go? I can only think of the old Tom Lehrer song:

There’s hurricanes in Florida.
There’re starving in Spain.
There’s rioting in Africa
And Texas needs rain

The whole world is festering
With unhappy souls
The French hate the Germans
The Germans hate the Poles
Something something South AfricanSouth Africans hate the Dutch
And I don’t like anybody very much...

There’s rioting in Africa
There’s strife in Iran
What nature doesn’t do to us...
Will be done by our fellow man..

(Thank you to Amando Alentejo for the link to the song so I could add the last stanza. I certainly couldn’t be more relevant!)

This was a long time ago, mind you, the animosities have rearranged themselves and I’ve forgotten a few of the words, but not much else has changed...

Anyway, Gail said, “it’s been so difficult for everybody, but then you have a day like today...(looks around at blue skies, perfect temperatures and a good cup of coffee and good friends) and there’s no place you would rather be....”

I’d just as soon not see quite such utter devastation on either side of us, but at least for the time being, and at eye watering expense, our house is clean, the soot and ash have been pushed off the paved surfaces and we can once again see through the windows! The Serve/Pro guy standing next to his truck bearing the motto ‘...just like it never happened’ was gazing at our house and said to me, ‘it’s blinding’. And it is indeed.

I wonder how long it will last when they start clearing up the debris next door, or the breeze comes up and blows all the ashes and soot and dead leaves out if the trees.

My old motto becomes relevant again...’live in the moment...’ I cut back and sculpted the plants on either side of him and gave my Buddha some flowers and thanked him for staying with us....