Two lights fell out of the ceiling yesterday. I brought in the ladders and figured out why. The junction boxes failed. The plastic crumbled. I guess fifteen years of hanging around in my ceiling was just too much for them.

Things are easing up. My sore hip and leg, tweaked during a week in the Black Hills and Badlands, are recovering. A massage on Monday and a visit to my doctor on Tuesday seem to have done the trick.

Things are changing. You might recall in 2023, after climbing to the top of Guadalupe peak and returning, I felt my life was entering a new period. I called it my Guadalupian Period, being as I’m a newborn fan of geology. And I was right.

On my recent trip to South Dakota, I visited Wall Drugs and the Corn Palace. I expected kitsch. I got art and history. Nice surprises in both cases.

I am back from the badlands, from the black hills, from the wide waters of the Missouri. I stood at the spot where Lewis and Clark first raised a US flag in the newly bought Louisiana Purchase.

My old roof is removed, and the new roof installed. There is still work to be done, but my house is dried in and safe from the elements.

Today, I get a new roof. Hail damaged my old one. The new one will be metal, as was the old. But a different style. Standing seam.

I feel as though this has been another year of living sickly.

On Wednesday of last week my intestinal system went on the fritz and became a water works.

Yesterday I was looking at my life in terms of continental drift which seems pretty appropriate. Over the millennia of earths existence land masses have risen and fallen and crashed into one another. As they do they raise mountains and give birth to new seas as the oceans of the world slosh about.

I’ve always noticed have’s and have nots. Maybe it goes back to me watching the movie Dr. Zhivago and the scene where Lara stands outside the restaurant window, starving, while inside the royalty wine and dine…

There was a house in Marathon that made me wonder. It was directly across the field from the house where we stayed. It was abandoned.

I’m still learning. Things. Skills. Information. I have curiosity and the willingness to listen. My journey to Marathon this week is a microcosm of my journey through life.

Sunday. Yesterday. August 4 was the fourth anniversary of my wife’s death. It passed without much notice. Only a close friend and a cousin offered condolences. And I think that’s as it should be.

Got up this morning, made the bed, and thought, this is an odd thing, making my bed when no one is looking.

I’m still thinking about space. Although yesterday it was about emptiness. About clearing away things to give yourself room to breathe, to focus on what’s important.

I got to thinking about space yesterday. Emptiness. The space between things. The void that gives you time to think, to pause, to reflect, to look.

There’s big medicine and there’s little medicine. Mostly, I’ve been writing about big medicine. Life threatening things, aneurysms, hearts. But that little medicine is still there. Last Wednesday my back spasmed when I bent over at the waist to pick up a bowl rather that stoop down.

After last summer, I swore if another string of 100 degree days fell upon me, I would head north until it cooled. Mother nature must have wanted me in Texas, however, because so far, this summer has been delightful.

Metaphorically I’ve been staring at my navel for nearly ten years. Now, for the first time, I am acutely aware of what lies behind said navel.