Caught Up in a Whirlwind

Thousands upon thousands of fragments spiral around you, catching the light on their shiny-sides, contrasting with the deep blue sky with their golden harvest sides, sparkling, flying, sailing, dazzling, twenty feet wide, seventy feet high ...

We picked Lillian up at her rural charter school and for a change of habit, took Division D road to take us home. On the way, we saw a farmer on a big tractor tilling his field, which had recently held rows of corn. The chaff of his corn-cutting mixed with the dirt, and the breeze conspired with the  fragments to produce a dust-devil, dancing and swirling only about 50 feet away from the road. We stopped the car (there was no traffic behind us) and watched it glittering.

With amazement, we held our breaths as the dust-devil headed toward us, carrying the shreds of cornstalk leaves; with awe we looked around us and up through the Vibe's moon-roof to see the dust-devil move over the car in its mini-tornado, sparks of light and dark and tan weaving through the air above and around us. Within minutes, it had jumped a levee and went to play among the trees along the river.

In 59 years of life, I have never seen anything like that. Inside a dust-devil, who could have thought of such an event. O God, it was so beautiful, thank You for such a blessing.

Ghost in the Machine

So this morning, I was standing at my work table in the studio, looking at the funnies and the BBC and the weather, using my laptop. On the right end of the table, my old laptop sat, closed up, unplugged, turned off.

Bernie's been telling me for over a year now that I have to get over my sentimentality and ditch the old laptop; an IMPORTANT WINDOWS UPDATE destroyed its optical drive (not lying, it really did, my computer and many many other people's computers) and made it a bit unstable at times. Plus the power cord connection is a bit loose and the battery no longer holds a charge.

But I have a lot of photos still on it, and the keyboard action is so comfortable and classy ... also, it runs with Vista OS and that means my old scanner still works with it, which my newer Windows 7 machines will not allow.

Anyway, this morning, as I was looking at the weather, I heard an odd yet familiar sound. At the end of the table, untouched by me or anything else, the old laptop turned itself on. I'm not shitting you, it did. Even with a dead battery, it turned itself on.

I opened it, and saw the background of my desktop, and then with a barely audible little yip, the screen went dead. Of course it did. The battery has no juice.

I plugged its power cord into the side, pressed the "Power" button, and fired it up. I used it all morning without problem, and now the machine display says that I have a fully charged battery.

Did my machine, upon whom I have written so many words, manipulated so many images, miss me that much? Indeed, I am writing this on it right now.

Say "Hello," Machine.