"Come in," she said, "I'll give you, shelter from the storm." - B. Dylan

Yesterday, I was sitting on a park bench, sipping a latte, doing my meditation routine, when the weather turned. Seemingly out of nowhere, a gust of wind, came blasting out of the west. The trees above me rattled like old bones, small branches and leaves fell down around me, large wooden slats blew off a building down the way, the power went out for blocks, no electricity for the street lights, the stores, the houses or apartments.

I walked home, in the swirl of a storm, fat raindrops pelting my head. At home everything was dark, no lights, no music, it was strange, the Lovely Carla and I were in an quiet nether zone, everything seemed different, we were forced to downshift by circumstances, we cooked our dinner by candlelight. We ate on the back porch with the little birdies in their cage, propped in the window, all of us marvelling at the power of the storm.

I read great chunks of my Nick Tosches book. I spent the late afternoon in New York City in the teens and twenties of the last century. Early evening, the power came back on, but we were already in a slowed down, more organic mode. We turned the lights off, laid in the dark and listened to the rain tapping on the leaves outside our window. There were sporadic sounds of fireworks going off in the distance. We listened and tried to imagine who could be out there, in the dark, playing with fire.