Houston Area and Middle Coastal Texans and Upward, Get Ready

Remembering driving along on a sweltering end-of-summer day with a crowded all-lanes mass migration of all manner of utility vehicles on I-10 on the far northern outskirts of my birthplace New Orleans, as immediately post Katrina as possible, heading zealously undeterred as far as we'd be allowed to go into the drowned City That Care Forgot, all craving to help, to make something amazing happen, my own little red Subaru wagon full of pet supplies, and me with directions to the main shelter in Gonzales and driving with tears flowing so very moved and proud to be alongside 100's and 100's of repair trucks of all kinds, big companies and independent craftsmen, carpenters, electricians, plumbers, truck after truck pulling their personal generators on wheels or in the pickup truck beds, trucks with cranes on them, big cement mixer trucks, pickups with a small mixer in the back, and many marked Humane Society vans and SUV's from states coast to coast, and riding alongside also one wild-maned tall skinny bespectacled hippie nerd in jeans and a t-shirt in a big gray old-style tall stepvan without any doors on either side such that you could see his whole long-legged scarecrow frame working the steering wheel and the pedals with eyes on the road ahead and with his long hair blowing back in the wind, and on the side of the stepvan were big handpainted letters saying 'Internet Services', as idiosyncratic and entreprenurial a sight as anyone might ever see, and gloriously he and I must have passed each other four or five times on the drive, beginning near Lake Charles, and each time I saw him - this techie Ichabod Crane to the rescue - having thought I'd seen the last of him each time, I would begin to laugh and then cry alternatingly and sometimes at the same time. Such is who we are, countless individuals, of all ages and colors and backgrounds and status and no doubt religions and other assorted affiliations and schools of thought or no thought at all but to get the job done no matter what was needed, for whomever needed it, with thought for the whole of us, for us, because we are each other's keepers after all, and here was the living proof all around you. Houston area and upper coastal Texans, get ready, god on Earth is coming to help.

DADDY LONG LEGS AND THE INLAND TROPICAL STORM

About a dozen daddy-long-legs, who live on and under the covered deck and feed around the porch light and in adjacent trees, are congregating inches from my front door, waiting for the chance to rush inside the cabin away from the unfamiliar and unnerving tropical storm-strength winds. Likely from birth, they have known the deck as their tenable and even comfortable home and fear being blown into the unknown by the gusts.

Yes they are aware of their body weight relative to the wind strength they feel. They are sentient and well-grounded in who they are and in the practical issues around their physicality. They know when they're hungry and thirsty, when it's night and day, and when it's hot, tepid, cool and cold, and that they're somehow related to their fellow daddy-long-legs.

I don't know if they dream or what they dream about if they do, but I don't seriously doubt that they do, and if they do I don't doubt at all that they dream of a strange alternative life on and around their deck and its adjacent trees and that they awake from their dreams a bit unclearly with a combined sense of the strange and familiar.

I very gently brush them aside as I begin to try and enter the cabin.  They scurry back and reclaim lost ground.  One more quick dainty cleansing and I slip inside without the door crushing any.  Their chances of survival on the deck are greater than their odds of slipping by ferocious napping cats suddenly awakening and eluding the oblivious late-night dark-room steps of the giant door-opening oaf.

They simply instead need to hide behind and under the tarp-covered naugahyde sofa some wannabe hillbilly placed on the deck, at least until the storm successfully negotiates the atmospheric effect of the earth's rotation and moves itself out of daddy long legs range.  I decide to let them learn this for themselves, the daddy long legs, that is.

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HE'S  EVERYWHERE   EVERYWHERE

He's everywhere   everywhere
try not to stare   not to stare
get him a chair   him a chair
though he's everywhere   everywhere

Is that the god   that the god
lord what a clod   what a clod
though quite a bod   quite a bod
though very odd   very odd

Though why a he   why a he
why not a she   not a she
is it heresy   heresy
if he's a she   she's a he

Is our world made   our world made
made in the shade   in the shade
is god afraid   god afraid
that he will fade   she will fade

What will we do   will we do
oh if we knew   if we knew
just what is true   what is true
what else is new  else is new
oh how about you   about you

He's everywhere   everywhere
try not to stare   not to stare
get him a chair   him a chair
though he's everywhere   she's everywhere
without a care   not a care
and out of there   out of there