Storm
By
George S Geisinger
There's a storm brewing outside at the moment. You can see it accumulating in the clouds overhead, just outside my window, way up over the tall trees, which trees, all still have their foliage from the summer. I'm always impressed with the ferocity of the storms down here in the Tidewater Area of Southern Virginia. They are all more passionate and furious than any of the storms I'm accustomed to, from all those years I lived in the Baltimore/Washington Metropolitan Area, way up North of here. It must be that we're more exposed to the Atlantic Ocean and the Chesapeake Bay down around here, at least, that's the impression I've got.
Another thing about the Tidewater Area, is that one gets to see a lot more of the US Naval Aviation going on down around here, than you ever see up home, because there are the great Naval airports here, not far away, and all the fighters come and go, patrolling around this place, near the Norfolk military bases, where there are all the major military establishments around here. I'm really expecting that the sky is just going to break loose at any moment now, but it hasn't happened yet. All that's happened is that the sky has gotten dark, with the sun going down, and my lunar muse seems to be stimulated by the darkening of the angry skies overhead.
There was a contractor in my suite this afternoon. He & I proved to be contemporaries, with a lot more to talk about than first met the eye, concerning the music industry of our mutual times, back in the 60's and the 70's. None of the placid old fuddy duddies around here know anything about all those great guitarists of the 60's and the 70's like ole Stuart did. Tommie knew, but he left town.
Stuart was able to shed some more light on things like, who was around doing the best guitar music during those days gone by and scarcely noticed. He even mentioned some names of guitarists I wasn't at all familiar with. It wasn't surprising, considering my head was in the clouds until just very recently, concerning the music industry of those times. I was too busy blowing my mind in those days. I was stoned and I missed it.
Stuart sealed up the windows here in my suite, at the Brighton Dam Apartments, here in Ginger Beach, and regardless of whether I've got screens in my windows or not, I'm securely sealed behind the closed windows, nice and snug by now, thanks to Stuart, with nothing being freed up to open, here in my suite at all anymore. I don't hear any thunder in the air yet. We're a little bit off the direct flight path of the US Navy Fighters just right here, where I live, so we don't hear the jets from right here in the building, at all. Anyone who would want to attack the east coast of the USA by air, would be very well advised to do it elsewhere, other than around Norfolk.
The fighters around here sound significantly formidable.
I'm well situated here in this place, in a very stable, large two story, brick building, with everything going for me to be able to weather any kind of storm that blows in around here. A few months after I arrived in these parts, we were evacuated to circumvent a presumably fierce hurricane coming our way. We arrived back home here, after weathering a lot worse conditions in Richmond, than the conditions turned out to be for those who stayed behind, right here by the bay. It sort of seems like a conflict in terms, that Richmond got hit harder than Ginger Beach, but that was what we were told when we finally got home.
As I write, all the thunder clouds outside have grown darker and darker. All the heavens outside seem to grow more and more the furious by the moment, around here. I keep pausing in my writing to glance out the window. The trees directly in my line of sight are standing stock still, and the clouds just get more and more ominous by the moment. I used to enjoy going for rides in the country, when I lived in the country up in Maryland. I've asked around since I've been down here, and it sounds like there must not be any real country roads, anywhere around in my local area down here.
It's a moot point now anyway. I have no way of going for a ride down a country road anymore, now that I've moved down to my new digs in Ginger Beach. I've sold my car, and let my driver's license expire since I've been here. There isn't anything I can do about it, either. Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you've got till it's gone.
They paved Paradise, put up a parking lot – Jonie Mitchel.
The hour is just about the time of sunset, but I'm not writing about that. I'm writing about the weather that seemed to be developing around here as I wrote. I fully expected to experience a cloud burst before this much time elapsed. But the clouds have been darkened by the sunset, and the evening darkness has set in, without any sign of the usual telltale developments of any kind of severity of weather making itself obvious outside my window, as the time goes by. I must have been mistaken. I've seen enough storms in the past year and a half, since I've lived here, to know that what I expected to develop must have blown right past us.
Now that it's pitch dark out my window, we've lost power for a minute, from a lightening strike I never really even noticed. It's raining cats and dogs outside, all of a sudden. I didn't really think I read all those thunder clouds so completely wrong. I guess I got my thunderstorm after all. It's almost magical to hear the sound of the rain outside in the dark night air.
I'm certain I wouldn't be so enamored with it, if I had to be outside during all this rain. There is something romantic about the Native Americans, who used to live the way the four-legged lived. I've always used to consider the ways of the two-legged and four-legged, whenever I used to drive my car around, out in the weather of rural, Central Maryland. I'll never grasp that lifestyle now that I'm indoors all the time, at a retirement community.
The storm must be several miles away by now, the way all the effects of the breakage in the electrical current after dark, was the only clue left in this environment, for the old hippie to imagine what it's like to live in a wilderness, now that he's sitting alone in these very comfortable surroundings, here at assisted living, down here in Dixieland. The two-legged is cut off from all of his most harsh reality contacts, as he sits in quiet comfort, here in the Deep South, where he has to live now.
The man was a boy scout for a few months, way back when he was young, but he learned so little about what it required, for a man to live well, out in the wilds, from being a boy scout so late in life, when he scarcely every went camping with anyone. It would be an insult to the Human Beings, to infer that he has any idea what the Too Many to Count have reduced the Human Beings to, who used to live free in this land before the locust people came.
The only thing the two-legged knows about the wilds, and about living wild, he accomplished by wasting away his brain on his own, personal experiments with what he calls his recreational chemistry, which the old, used to be, long haired hippie freak finally notices, as the storm finally blows in on the other side of his secured window. The lightening, which somehow brings him no thunderclap that would be audible to him, lightens up his window sometimes, for him to see in his seat indoors, at the moment, which is not any matter of consequence to him in this environment.
There are other two-legged, the man understands, who live out under the skies these days, but nobody around here hunts game with a bow and arrow anymore, including our wish-he-was Native American, from before the time of the White Man. The homeless people around here are not likely to be anybody the man might know. Now, up home, the guy used to see some homeless people he had been in the laughing academy with, in days gone by, but it was wasted effort to try to talk to any of them. They were just needy people, and he obviously wasn't, in his latest circumstances.
He'd go buy some cigarettes, and go out to the traffic lights, where the latest Human Beings beg nickels and dimes, and give the cigarettes away, for absolutely nothing, talking trash and acting a fool among the tribes of the disenfranchised. He realizes that's what it would amount to, and he dismisses the idea before it gets a foothold on his thinking. For our man to buy any cigarettes, would be like our man buying anybody alcohol, and the guy refuses to go there.
Well, the storm seems to have blown on through by now, and the ground did get wet, after all. The guy is just as glad he doesn't have to sleep in wet clothing tonight, as he tries to think of how he can wrap up this little piece of blogging he's been exercising over too much time to do anything much else, in this dark night. There's the muffled growl of some kind of jet outside, just as the man wants to let this thought go altogether.
Some outdoors man I ended up to be, coursing through the wilderness on paved roads in a climate controlled automobile, on four wheels, then breaking my hip while I'm walking indoors, necessitating me to have to walk almost exclusively indoors with a rollator all the time. I don't even feel competent to walk simply using my cane anymore, although I might take the chance I'll fall, and trying it again sometime.
My spiritual experiences with nature are valid enough, I'm certain, but I'm so far removed from those experiences now, I don't see how I'm ever to retrieve them. I've set myself on a quest here to write about my spiritual connection with Nature here, and find myself failing utterly.
I've managed to get my writing noticeably closer to my actual schizophrenic thought processes, according to my observant, former therapist, but whether anyone will ever want to spend much money on my writing based on this analysis, while I'm freely demonstrating schizophrenic thinking and writing like it, too, neither he nor I can imagine.
I figure it's worth a try though, and I continue to post writings here and there on the world wide web. My memories of a traumatic personal history are not likely to attract a lot of readers, either. I think my writing might go the way of my crocheting. I might abruptly leave off with it, while the telltale signs of it would simply remain in place, where they are, either selling or not, I can't honestly say I'm too involved anymore.
By
George S Geisinger
There's a storm brewing outside at the moment. You can see it accumulating in the clouds overhead, just outside my window, way up over the tall trees, which trees, all still have their foliage from the summer. I'm always impressed with the ferocity of the storms down here in the Tidewater Area of Southern Virginia. They are all more passionate and furious than any of the storms I'm accustomed to, from all those years I lived in the Baltimore/Washington Metropolitan Area, way up North of here. It must be that we're more exposed to the Atlantic Ocean and the Chesapeake Bay down around here, at least, that's the impression I've got.
Another thing about the Tidewater Area, is that one gets to see a lot more of the US Naval Aviation going on down around here, than you ever see up home, because there are the great Naval airports here, not far away, and all the fighters come and go, patrolling around this place, near the Norfolk military bases, where there are all the major military establishments around here. I'm really expecting that the sky is just going to break loose at any moment now, but it hasn't happened yet. All that's happened is that the sky has gotten dark, with the sun going down, and my lunar muse seems to be stimulated by the darkening of the angry skies overhead.
There was a contractor in my suite this afternoon. He & I proved to be contemporaries, with a lot more to talk about than first met the eye, concerning the music industry of our mutual times, back in the 60's and the 70's. None of the placid old fuddy duddies around here know anything about all those great guitarists of the 60's and the 70's like ole Stuart did. Tommie knew, but he left town.
Stuart was able to shed some more light on things like, who was around doing the best guitar music during those days gone by and scarcely noticed. He even mentioned some names of guitarists I wasn't at all familiar with. It wasn't surprising, considering my head was in the clouds until just very recently, concerning the music industry of those times. I was too busy blowing my mind in those days. I was stoned and I missed it.
Stuart sealed up the windows here in my suite, at the Brighton Dam Apartments, here in Ginger Beach, and regardless of whether I've got screens in my windows or not, I'm securely sealed behind the closed windows, nice and snug by now, thanks to Stuart, with nothing being freed up to open, here in my suite at all anymore. I don't hear any thunder in the air yet. We're a little bit off the direct flight path of the US Navy Fighters just right here, where I live, so we don't hear the jets from right here in the building, at all. Anyone who would want to attack the east coast of the USA by air, would be very well advised to do it elsewhere, other than around Norfolk.
The fighters around here sound significantly formidable.
I'm well situated here in this place, in a very stable, large two story, brick building, with everything going for me to be able to weather any kind of storm that blows in around here. A few months after I arrived in these parts, we were evacuated to circumvent a presumably fierce hurricane coming our way. We arrived back home here, after weathering a lot worse conditions in Richmond, than the conditions turned out to be for those who stayed behind, right here by the bay. It sort of seems like a conflict in terms, that Richmond got hit harder than Ginger Beach, but that was what we were told when we finally got home.
As I write, all the thunder clouds outside have grown darker and darker. All the heavens outside seem to grow more and more the furious by the moment, around here. I keep pausing in my writing to glance out the window. The trees directly in my line of sight are standing stock still, and the clouds just get more and more ominous by the moment. I used to enjoy going for rides in the country, when I lived in the country up in Maryland. I've asked around since I've been down here, and it sounds like there must not be any real country roads, anywhere around in my local area down here.
It's a moot point now anyway. I have no way of going for a ride down a country road anymore, now that I've moved down to my new digs in Ginger Beach. I've sold my car, and let my driver's license expire since I've been here. There isn't anything I can do about it, either. Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you've got till it's gone.
They paved Paradise, put up a parking lot – Jonie Mitchel.
The hour is just about the time of sunset, but I'm not writing about that. I'm writing about the weather that seemed to be developing around here as I wrote. I fully expected to experience a cloud burst before this much time elapsed. But the clouds have been darkened by the sunset, and the evening darkness has set in, without any sign of the usual telltale developments of any kind of severity of weather making itself obvious outside my window, as the time goes by. I must have been mistaken. I've seen enough storms in the past year and a half, since I've lived here, to know that what I expected to develop must have blown right past us.
Now that it's pitch dark out my window, we've lost power for a minute, from a lightening strike I never really even noticed. It's raining cats and dogs outside, all of a sudden. I didn't really think I read all those thunder clouds so completely wrong. I guess I got my thunderstorm after all. It's almost magical to hear the sound of the rain outside in the dark night air.
I'm certain I wouldn't be so enamored with it, if I had to be outside during all this rain. There is something romantic about the Native Americans, who used to live the way the four-legged lived. I've always used to consider the ways of the two-legged and four-legged, whenever I used to drive my car around, out in the weather of rural, Central Maryland. I'll never grasp that lifestyle now that I'm indoors all the time, at a retirement community.
The storm must be several miles away by now, the way all the effects of the breakage in the electrical current after dark, was the only clue left in this environment, for the old hippie to imagine what it's like to live in a wilderness, now that he's sitting alone in these very comfortable surroundings, here at assisted living, down here in Dixieland. The two-legged is cut off from all of his most harsh reality contacts, as he sits in quiet comfort, here in the Deep South, where he has to live now.
The man was a boy scout for a few months, way back when he was young, but he learned so little about what it required, for a man to live well, out in the wilds, from being a boy scout so late in life, when he scarcely every went camping with anyone. It would be an insult to the Human Beings, to infer that he has any idea what the Too Many to Count have reduced the Human Beings to, who used to live free in this land before the locust people came.
The only thing the two-legged knows about the wilds, and about living wild, he accomplished by wasting away his brain on his own, personal experiments with what he calls his recreational chemistry, which the old, used to be, long haired hippie freak finally notices, as the storm finally blows in on the other side of his secured window. The lightening, which somehow brings him no thunderclap that would be audible to him, lightens up his window sometimes, for him to see in his seat indoors, at the moment, which is not any matter of consequence to him in this environment.
There are other two-legged, the man understands, who live out under the skies these days, but nobody around here hunts game with a bow and arrow anymore, including our wish-he-was Native American, from before the time of the White Man. The homeless people around here are not likely to be anybody the man might know. Now, up home, the guy used to see some homeless people he had been in the laughing academy with, in days gone by, but it was wasted effort to try to talk to any of them. They were just needy people, and he obviously wasn't, in his latest circumstances.
He'd go buy some cigarettes, and go out to the traffic lights, where the latest Human Beings beg nickels and dimes, and give the cigarettes away, for absolutely nothing, talking trash and acting a fool among the tribes of the disenfranchised. He realizes that's what it would amount to, and he dismisses the idea before it gets a foothold on his thinking. For our man to buy any cigarettes, would be like our man buying anybody alcohol, and the guy refuses to go there.
Well, the storm seems to have blown on through by now, and the ground did get wet, after all. The guy is just as glad he doesn't have to sleep in wet clothing tonight, as he tries to think of how he can wrap up this little piece of blogging he's been exercising over too much time to do anything much else, in this dark night. There's the muffled growl of some kind of jet outside, just as the man wants to let this thought go altogether.
Some outdoors man I ended up to be, coursing through the wilderness on paved roads in a climate controlled automobile, on four wheels, then breaking my hip while I'm walking indoors, necessitating me to have to walk almost exclusively indoors with a rollator all the time. I don't even feel competent to walk simply using my cane anymore, although I might take the chance I'll fall, and trying it again sometime.
My spiritual experiences with nature are valid enough, I'm certain, but I'm so far removed from those experiences now, I don't see how I'm ever to retrieve them. I've set myself on a quest here to write about my spiritual connection with Nature here, and find myself failing utterly.
I've managed to get my writing noticeably closer to my actual schizophrenic thought processes, according to my observant, former therapist, but whether anyone will ever want to spend much money on my writing based on this analysis, while I'm freely demonstrating schizophrenic thinking and writing like it, too, neither he nor I can imagine.
I figure it's worth a try though, and I continue to post writings here and there on the world wide web. My memories of a traumatic personal history are not likely to attract a lot of readers, either. I think my writing might go the way of my crocheting. I might abruptly leave off with it, while the telltale signs of it would simply remain in place, where they are, either selling or not, I can't honestly say I'm too involved anymore.