how avoiding Twisters threw me into the new Big O

Sunday night and the wind is violently shaking the hotel windows and snapping tree branches across corn fields and empty streets. I flip on the television before the the power is lost, and see tornado and severe thunderstorm warnings across Kansas and Nebraska.

I pull the bed sheet covers over my head and close my eyes to another sleepless night in Wichita.

The next morning the wind has abated. Driving along the Midwest highway, signs of last night’s storm still linger. Driving rain falls without warning, telephone poles are snapped in two and scattered along the road. The remains of a silo is twisted and lays in an empty field. A friends house is struck by lightning, another family’s home is completely destroyed by the twister.

It’s brutal reminder that Death is random, it can pass you by, or strike with a vengeance.

I move onto Omaha. The ominous clouds threaten more destruction. One watchful eye is on the sky, the other is moving through the city’s new, revitalized downtown. Old buildings have been refurbished into art galleries, taking the discarded and turning them into something new, akin to the Twisters.

Rain falls yet I do not seek shelter. There is a part of me that wants to welcome death, to see if Mother Nature has chosen me this time. I sit and patiently watch the clouds.

Death is nothing to be afraid of, it is shown in the sinew muscles of my body, aging with the passing of time. I will capture life the only way I know how, write how I feel, continue on until my time to speak ends.

I love the sculptures and brick mortar of the Midwest.