The Sun Goes Down In Our Eyes
After rush hour, late yesterday, I returned from our new place in Batavia.
We have yet to move in, — my visit was to assess the dimensions of the rooms, to get a sense of what is possible. The space of habitation 
determines, almost absolutely, the form and texture of the life that is possible within those boundaries.
One of the first objects to be placed in the backyard was the stone Buddha, transported from our Mundelein home. The Buddha is at home anywhere, everywhere. I placed it on an elevated section of the flower garden. It is proper for the dispassionate face to behold everything with it’s serene gaze.
The return home on I355 revealed banks of clouds to the west, a towering frontal boundary between the humidity laden, stifling heat and a cooler, less dense atmosphere from the north. The sun was setting, filtered by the darkening cloud bank, blood red. I desired to watch it set, but dared not, while traveling at 70 mph on the highway. I felt the sunset in blood, for some miles, the car speeding in traffic. I regret that I did not pull over just to take it all in.
Last night I had a dream, a strange dream. Years ago when I was younger my Japanese friends would have called this a fushigi na yume, (不思議) a mysteriously strange dream. I dreamed that I cradled my fathers head in my arms, as he was dying. I heard myself telling him that I loved him. In the dream I felt the real weight of each of those words. It was a calming dream-vision because in life that is not how things were. At the time I did not feel that I understood my father, and it was the same from his side.
It is continues to rain, more steady now, by comparison to the curtains of water, sometimes driven horizontal that came before. Climate change, increasing atmospheric heat-load, disrupting, sometimes flooding, drowning just planted crops, or placing fields underwater so that crops go un-planted until too late in the season. Climate change means too much heat, too much water, seasons too short…. John Sherck, owner of Sherck Seeds In Bristol, Indiana uses the term “global weirding” to describe the weather the past few years.
Nature has marshaled an army of assault against the avaricious, unmindful “more,” of capitalist civilization. The waves of shock troops keep coming. Our line-of-battle is bending, about to give way.
I heard that the President, at a campaign rally in my home State of North Carolina continued to lambast four female members of Congress, urging that they leave a country that they are unhappy with. He denigrated as “hate-filled extremists who are constantly trying to tear our country down” the four Democratic congress women. The crowd resonating with the Presidents theme chanted “Send her back! Send her back!” —suggesting that Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota be involuntarily deported.
Exile anyone?
