8-4-2022: Day 302
The meteorite passed by with very little fuss, drama, or fanfare. A black mass of space dust debris, burning up on a lonely journey into the less explored reaches beyond the Earth’s atmosphere. It passed by, brushing closer than the moon, observed only by military minions, astronomy boffins, and trainspotters of the Universe. And it missed the fragile human ecosystem – of this world tilting precariously on its axis – by a whisker of an alien’s eyebrow hair.
The news landed unspectacularly on my internet story timeline, as I sipped on a flat white in the Tom Foolery coffee shop on the Shoreham high street.
I wondered, in the fleeting moment, whether the loaded, anxiety-inducing, rumours of WWIII, were a little dramatic – given a meteorite could have just wiped out the Ukraine and Russia, in a giant flash in the planetary frying pan.
Retrospectively, however, this proved to be just another nagging thought singing the synapses, on a dry Friday afternoon in Springtime.
9-4-2022: Day 303
I was vibing with the anthemic soul of The Commodores on the ‘Night Shift’. On a clear starry night, staring up into the intoxicating, G&T half-lemon-slice, of a moon. Gazing into the night sky, I found myself speculating on the white streaks criss-crossing the dark heavens above my eyeline. To some, nature’s knitting patterns. To others, conspiratorial chem trails. I was past caring, caring instead to concentrate on the 50th year birthday eve party of my one true love and crazy strife.
Watching the flashing red light of a plane fly through the skies overhead, I got to thinking whether the lightning bolt of love can strike in the same place decades later. The same intensity, the same power, the same magnitude.
Love. A thunderclap of Universal forces.
Love. Planetary alignments lighting up the astrology columns.
Love. Written in the stars.
And with a scratch of the head, I disappear inside to fix up a G&T for the road.
10-4-2022: Day 304
It was a 3 AM, middle-of-the-night, rehydration call. I sloped downstairs in the near pitch black, the only light coming from the glaring streetlamp beyond and the flashing red LED of the answer machine. There were two messages, from mystery callers, adrift on a lucid dream.
I sunk two pints of water from my glass beer chalice and pondered the next twenty-four hours. Of a half-century birthday party for the love of my life, the sleeping blond beauty upstairs.
Sleep never came. The Sandman had quit his night watch post. Instead, I wrestled with the darkness visible, a hyperactive mind racing with a reduced intake of Big Pharma brain drugs. Speculating on whether I would ever sleep again, I wondered if pulling off the party heist of half-a-lifetime for the young lioness might prove a brain safari too far.
And, lying in wait for the False Dawn chorus, I mulled over the surprises to come, washing up with the tide on the echo beach of this special day of days.