I don't think it's really so fun to stay at the YMCA, but they make it seem more plausible. Summer dwindles away and certain images take their turn. The Braves' season wheezes on an iron lung, but the fun hasn't vanished. At last, the evenings provide cool reliefs and I often sit with the window open behind me, allowing the song of the nighttime to blend in to the soundtrack. Every five or ten minutes, tranquillity is shattered as a walnut, bigger than a golf ball, smacks into the ground just beyond the carport. They remind me of a time when I was camping alone in Savage Gulf, Tennessee during the peak of fall. The foliage was superb but little flotsam and jetsam rained down through the trees and onto my tent, keeping me deep into the scotch to get some sleep. Then an owl, loud as a car horn, blared directly above about two in the morning and I must have surely turned to black and white in some kind of Little Rascals take as I convulsed in my sleeping bag. This is the time of year for scary stories and remembrances, and scary movies. I saw Rob Zombie's new Halloween. Pew. We'll strive to do better in the next eight weeks.As the winds pick up in the late night, the crashes come more frequently. One hits the roof every once in a while but none have made it to the cars yet. I'm tempted to go out and sit on the hill under the tree and dare the falling missiles to find my head. Some would come with little fanfare but others would begin the descent with a whistle in the wind and then a rattling cascade through the branches and thick air, with a satisfying plop at the sudden end. The reality of earth. That's where I am. I stand by my dish.
