Lightning shots & grievous pettiness
Gotta be real, reader, ever since Afghanistan fell to the Taliban I’ve been feeling real sad and heavy in my heart and mind. In my Secret Program for Drunks, I am on the part where you try to give all your bullshit over to God. And no, I’m not “religious,” but I can, 99% of the time accept there are forces more powerful than me, and that my own life is a kind of evidence. Ugh. Just mind your business about my God business and I’ll mind my business about your God business. No, that’s not even true. I’ll just shut up on this now, so as not to derail what I intend to make a short, sweet post.
I was feeling low today. I woke up late. I had no time for meditations or proper caffeination and my news intake levels were pretty low. Then I walked into the joyful chaos of a morning in a school building with young people, and decided not to deny myself absolute presence in that electric space.
And guess what? Today was a better day than yesterday.
By quite a lot. A number of the “problems” (lowercase problems, truly) began to resolve themselves, and some of my Other Problems (of which cancer is one) continued their glacial slide toward clarity and reason.
I had fun today.
I think my students learned some important things today.
I know I learned a few important things today about humility and patience, mostly. I learned how to listen more loudly and wait longer, and to practice happiness in doing either (or — God forbid — both simultaneously).
Patience. Humility.
Show up. Shut up.
Even when you are the teacher sometimes
you are not the teacher.
I’m staring to write like Yoda or some shit now,
which is how I know I’m probably getting sleepy, and
should wrap it up. +
*as-the-God-I-Believe-In as my Witness, I am not teaching the young of these borderlands to write the way I write on my Neurotic American Blog. I hate acronyms, but I hereby claim rights to NAB and all its subsidiaries. (Also, everyone LOVES acronyms in the Dark Ages. I blame the Internet.
I had a good day, and we got more rain this evening.
I realize this is abnormal for my part of the planet. I realize the excessive rain is likely a symptom of a larger, lethal illness. What kills us is not COVID, not cancer, not facts, but these hideously overgrown monkeys we currently call “humans.” We are killing us.
Anyway, I did have a good day. As good as it gets in these here Dark Ages.
And when I came home I sat outside and watched the storm come in and processed my day, sat with my day, felt my body at rest. Smiled at my own hard work. And then I tried, as I’ve tried for weeks now, to get a “lightning shot.” See, the lightning here in the desert is so clear and intense and distinct and . . . you just have to see it. I can’t really describe. It’s different than any lightning I’ve ever seen. So I want, greedily, to capture it so I can show others what I saw and they might understand what I am thinking and feeling. Like writing, but with photos instead of words. I guess that’s just, um, called “Photography.”
But I kept taking photos and no luck. The lightning came, it went, I could not save it on my phone camera. Maybe, I thought. I should get a real camera. And I’m such a fucking cliche for this because everyone from east of the Mississippi River who moves out here thinks they’re a visual artist. It’s too fucking easy to be good out here because it is ridiculously beautiful and wickedly, unrelentingly, fascinatingly strange.
So I gave up on trying to photograph the lightning, and just sat there looking at the lightning as it shot across the sky and toward the earth is silver, blue, and sometimes vaguely golden bursts. And after a while, ready to make my way toward bed, I got up and looked at the photos I had taken figuring there would be at least one or two worthy of my Instagram or Facebook feed and it was then I saw it — I had gotten my “lightning shot.” It was small, nothing “really cool” (according to moi), but it was my “first” lightning shot. Felt like that scene in Karate Kid where Daniel catches a fly with the chopsticks and Miyagi says, “Hmph. Beginner’s Luck.” (That is a solid, solid movie. I hate the whole love story part because I’m a grumpy middle aged woman now, and other than the dated love story the message is fairly decent in spots. 3/4 Stars from Gruber. I would say no kid under 15 should see that shit unsupervised given the Grievous Pettiness, Unnecessary Superficial Violence, and Icky 80s Cornballery, but what do I know.)
I got the lightning shot.
I didn’t even know I had gotten the lightning shot until I went back and looked, and then I was tempted to go back out and try to get more lightning shots that are even better than this lightning shot . . . You know, reader? Sometimes, you just gotta know when to fold ’em. And so I said to myself, “Enough lightning shots for today. Now you rest,” and yeah, True Confession from the Borderlands: Sometimes, though not often, in my sobriety, my inner voice is Yoda, and I don’t give a flying fuck. Not even one.
So here’s the first ever “lightning shot.” Like catching my first fish, though far less messy and not at all fraught with “first-feelings-about-human-cruelty-and-indifference.”
And without further adieu, the lightning shot:
