Tarmac Meditations #178: Safe at Home from Time to Time

I like the light in this first image on account of it was fading fast and felt magical to me. Not a special image, or a flashy image for that matter It just felt like bein’ safe at home on the edge of a summer storm when I took it.

In the next image, I had just finished a workout on my deck and noticed that the sun had dropped behind the house. It was suddenly a bit chilly, despite the sweat I had worked up and the heavy breathing that had overtaken me. I leaned on the railing to catch my breath and to stop the flood of thoughts: that exercising to recover my health had brought on the END TIMES for me. And I was also thinking, not for the first time, that 911 was my new favorite number. The chill inside a summer day is a theme in my life and has been for years; as a kid at summer camp knowing too soon that the fun and games would likely end before I got that first kiss from the red haired girl in cabin three; that school was starting and that meant all the pressure around getting into college to avoid the draft for Vietnam was already building up; that the days of ease at the cottage on the big lake were drifting and real work in the city would take over with all the striving and scheming that made up my life in those days. It went further back than all that, to a time when my family ran a hotel in the Catskill mountains that would empty out completely on Labor Day morning, the vast lobby and dining room empty of all but a few stragglers. In my memory, every year clouds covered the noonday sun, as I felt the chill of fall as we packed up and headed home to the city.

Now, that is a lot of stuff for a brief instant on the railing of the deck. But even so, when I saw the image above, I knew that I was right on time and exactly where I belong, doing what I do.

Image Credit

Photos by Michael Lebowitz. All rights reserved.