Lots of earthquakes and a volcano spouting from under the glacier in Iceland.  Mud everywhere.  The very ground beneath us dropping out of sight.  The Church rumbles with rumors and scandal.  Polish leaders wiped out in
a crash.  Neighborhood geography shifted beyond recognition.  Drastic emotional upsets.  Upheavals in structures, in patterns, in thinking in conventions. 

How does a little piece of protoplasmic human, tiny on a modest planet near an average-sized sun, manage to find a rooting reason to stay on the planet?  Well, some obviously decide otherwise and take off with hundreds beneath rubble, falling into the ice and sea.  But what about us here still?

What is the most emotionally flexible thing we’ve done?  How can I stretch even further the envelope of patience and emotional expectation?  How can I provide a soothing escape from the collapsing patterns without diving into inebriation to hide?  And that phrase that repeats itself over and over again in my head: “Everything you know is wrong.”  Just can’t be true.

Can it?  And what if it is?  What if the street I live on disappears?  Where do I go without a job, my family, my car and the very road I follow each day?

I find a new route.  I step over the fallen walls.  New horizons come into view through the ashfall.  Bonds and bridges appear with those sharing stunned faces.  We are shifting and I bend at my sore knees.