Brave strides sought and embraced...

I was driving back from a photoshoot yesterday, on the 5, when I saw a procession of no less than 40 ambulances speeding through traffic in the opposite direction. A plume of smoke about a mile or so from the freeway suggested trouble. I turned on the radio and, as if in a movie, heard reports of the devastating train crash that had just occurred in Chatsworth. My problems suddenly seemed very small.

This morning I woke to this image of Sarah's cousin (and family) wading through the rising waters brought on by Hurricane Ike. Again, their alarming reality instantly trumped any of the persistent abstractions that forest my psyche.

What is in the duffel bag I wonder? What baggage do you tote through calamity? Are these essentials more real than the baggage we cling to in non-emergencies?

Confession: With a tendency toward inward abstraction and sidestepping concrete definitions of reality, I am now embracing certain objective facts as they occur. I am tagging and releasing indisputable external conditions. I am dismantling the realms of fantasy, making room for something far stranger than fiction. I don't downplay or disown any nanosecond of my imaginary past. Too easy to say "I hadn't come in to myself then." Too easy to invoke a redemption.

Me me me... ugh. Let's talk about you you you...