If I Disappear, I’m Still Here

As I write this, I can hear the surf crashing against the rocks, perhaps a half mile distant. The wind is pushing through the trees insistently. It sounds like an angry dog, lost in the woods. Throaty and impossibly large. The trees quake in its grip, as though in fear.

There’s something majestic about a storm. Something imperious. And here, tonight, in full throat, it will not be denied.

I don’t mind it, not while I’m inside where it’s warm. I’m at my computer, with a blanket wrapped around my legs. There are fingers of flame licking at the window of the airtight fireplace and seeing it adds to the warmth as much as the reality of the fire. It feels warm, but it looks warm, too. Together those things make the reality of this inside -- away from the storm -- more real than what’s outside my front door. It’s an illusion, but a comfortable one at the moment.

It seems likely that, in the end, the storm will win. It usually does when it demands as this one is demanding. A tree will fall, a wire will break and I’ll be scratching into a notebook in longhand, with candles illuminating the dark corners.

If I go all quiet again for a while, I’m still here, scratching as stated, sitting at the hearth while the fire sustains while the storm inspires.