parallel worlds

A Time of New Weather is the title of a novel by friend Sean Murphy who conducted a great writing and meditation workshop this past weekend. I'm still reaping the benefits of it and trying to keep up a practice until we meet again in three weeks. And it certainly is a time of new weather. Bits of my world have shifted slightly. Things are different, unusual. Certainly the most profound are images of superstorm Sandy's devastation. I woke up yesterday morning with a premonition that something bad was about to happen and didn't let go of the feeling until I'd contacted the family in CT and knew they were safe. But I spent a disconcerting day with my body in New Mexico and my mind 2200 miles away. My mind has not yet returned. I'm leaving a light on.

triggering towns
There are certain towns and cities where I once lived that linger in my mind and which I still feel connected to. Author Richard Hugo calls them "triggering towns". Mine are Narragansett, RI. New York City. Rowayton, CT. There are others on other coasts and in other countries, but those three were uppermost in my mind as they got blasted by a record-breaking superstorm with a gentle name. Daughter-in-law Debbie sent me this photo of Rowayton taken early in the day. I don't know what happened later, but it probably wasn't good.

The image triggered a recollection of a long ago nor'easter in Rowayton when we lived there and my kids were young. They got stranded in various places when the storm hit and the tide was expected to be higher than normal due to a full moon. While the phone was still working (pre cellphone era) we knew approximately where they were. Their father and I went out on a rescue mission wearing boots and warm clothes (was it late October, too?) -- it was growing dark, the tide was coming in and we could go no further once we noticed a small bridge under water and icey, slushy seawater rushing onto the road and over our boots. The water illuminated in the streetlights looked pale green. My teen sons got home somehow, with reports of seeing floating Volkwagons on the road,  but their younger sister didn't make it.  She stayed overnight in the home of a couple of strangers who lived on the other side of the bridge. She reported drinking hot cocoa and being wrapped in blankets on their sofa. It was that kind of town in those days.

the lost pies
Meanwhile, here in Taos, the weekend cold snap passed and the days are quiet and sunny again with cloudless blue skies. Many more trees are bare, the migrating birds are gone, and the remaining leaves and fields are bronze going brown. Fruit still on trees are way past prime. This tree on a busy road in town was laden with slowly rotting apples. Pies anyone? Too late. Move on.

It's hard to take it all in, it's all so new. I look at the creek at my feet. It smashes under the bridge like a fist, but there is no end to its force; it hurtles down as far as I can see till it lurches round the bend, filling valley, flattening, mashing, pushed, wider and faster, till it fills my brain. 
It's like a dragon.
      Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, "Flood"