THE USUAL NOTE FROM LB: From the summer of 2002 to the spring of 2010, Gwen the Beautiful and I were the proud and often exhausted owners of a beautiful Ozarks property we called Cloud Creek Ranch.
In many ways, the ranch was paradise. But it was a paradise with a price that started going up before we even knew it existed. Here’s another Monday musing about our adventure and the lessons we learned.
Oh, and if y’all detect any irony, please believe me when I say it comes straight from the universe and not your kindly Uncle Larry B.
by Larry Brody
I’ve been reminiscing about the past for the last couple of weeks because I haven’t been able to face the present.
I’ve worked hard to become a man who can rise to the occasion. Any occasion. A man who goes through life without preconceptions and judgments and expectations so that I can respond immediately to what’s happening instead of having to shake off a pattern or a mindset or a fear. I predicted nothing.
For awhile I thought I’d pulled it off, and I was pretty darn proud.
I established a one on one relationship with the universe. I talked to it and heard it talk to me. I felt love from people and animals and trees and even the wind, and loved them back in return.
Way to go, Larry B! I told myself. Now you’re ready.
For anything.
And that seemed to genuinely be the case. When bad things happened, I reacted not to what I imagined, or to something similar held over from my childhood, but to what really was going on. The same thing with the good.
My business, for example, stopped being the most exciting and fulfilling activity on earth and instead was a time and energy sapping mess, draining me financially and emotionally.
I faced it.
Handled it.
Accepted the end of an era in my life, and the fact that I had to start something new.
Gloried in the search for what could come next, and the forging of a new path.
My wife, Gwen the Beautiful, had a stroke that left her half-blind. Followed by a fall that left her dead until I held her in my arms and—as I saw it then and still see it now—willed her back to life.
I faced it.
Handled it.
Accepted the concept of my loved one’s mortality, and of the aching loneliness it would cause me.
Rejoiced in this victory over eternity, and the awareness of how precious each moment is.
These are big things. Very big.
And so was my pride. I’d found the way, right? I was ahead of the game. One up on life.
Enlightened.
Redeemed.
But then came the event I’ve been dodging writing about for months. And not only writing. Until today, I hadn’t been able to think about it either. Whenever I tried, my concentration would slip away. I’d be distracted by a sound, a sight, a memory. Or by nothing at all.
The strangest thing about this particular event—or perhaps not?—is that it wasn’t personal. Not in the least. It happened around me, not to me, and had only the smallest immediate impact on my day. But it hurt others, and with such savage intensity that it cut me right down to size.
Left me gasping at my own arrogance. My petty pretension.
Made me aware of the cocoon of self-delusion in which I’d wrapped myself for who knows how long.
So I’m standing up to the universe now, and looking this majestic, intimidating, awesome happenstance right in the eye, and I’m thinking and writing and making myself say:
“Whoa, Universe, that was some tornado we had here in Paradise back in February, you know? Trucks blown away. Roofs ripped off. Walls smashed. Whole buildings torn from their foundations.
“So many trees down. And headstones too. Businesses wiped out. Homes totaled. A woman died.
“And no one was ready for it. And even if they had been, there was nothing anyone could do. No matter how strong or how smart or how wise or how quick. No matter how in the moment, how courageous, or how filled with love.
“There was absolutely nothing any of us could do.”
Although my home and my family and my animals and my property weren’t directly touched by this Big Wind, something inside me was. The day after the tornado hit I drove through Ground Zero in neighboring Gassville, Arkansas and saw a ruined town.
Looked hard at the empty lot where Letty’s Restaurant had been. Shook my head at the mounds of wreckage that only two days earlier had been a block of homes.
“Whoa, Universe, you hurt a lot of people. And you scared the hell out of me.”
I’m shocked at how much the power of nature and my awareness of the powerlessness of man terrified me. Time now to face it and the Universe and take stock of myself.
And do all I can to help all the others in pain.
