It's been a while...

It seems to me that it's been a long, long time since I wrote my meaningless meanderings. Of course, there's no one looking but on the off chance that someone is, I keep putting in my two bits here.
Flying out of Boston and heading towards a rising sun over an erstwhile empire was hair-raising. That was because the plane I was supposed to be on "was hit by lightning a dozen times" or so the manager of the airlines said. Of course there was this collective gasp and in the middle of all the yelling voices, someone was heard to ask, was anyone hurt? That could have been a caring query or a hopeful statement. I like to think it was the former. Someone should have mentioned that scientifically, the so-called bolt of lightning is really several bolts of lightning so, in reality, it must have been one lightning strike that the plane suffered. Suffered it did, since we were told that the undercarriage had a hole in it, one that the technical expert dismissed as too insignificant to stop the plane. The manager thought otherwise and had the plane grounded till the next day.
Sure, one day late but the destination within reach was the philosophical shrug of the shoulders among many.
Flying into to Heathrow was beautiful. The golden dawn lit up the aircraft's wings and engines so beautifully that it could only be the work of the higher power to give us such a beautiful sight. Alas, what He gives, he also takes away and as the plane descended through the clouds we realized that there is such a thing as being unfair. London was under a thick cloud and the sun barely managed to get the light through.
Dawn gone but the dusk of America remains one of my most loved sights. Remember my last? The picture of the bridge over the freeway to New Jersey? This is another one I got out there. Nature was kind enough to help me with a thick cover along the way but left me a vista of blue mountains - the Adirondacks - looming in the distance. A thing of beauty, a joy for ever.
London was dull but that was because I was stuck in the terminal. I did meet up with a former marine who was going home to Indiana and a lovely woman who was going on to India to meet her husband. We wined and dined together, and exchanged little dos and don'ts of how to cope with things and then she slept all the way.

...Where I am...

I'm lazy. That's what's wrong with me. I'm so lazy that I'd rather sit back with my feet up and dream of all the things I could do than get out and do them.
I was pushed to travel and New Jersey it was. My boss was driving and I loved just sitting back getting snap happy with my camera stopping occasionally to look at the rolling Adirondacks and the sprawling countryside. Crossing little brooks and the large Hudson, I began to quieten down and just drink in the scenic sunset that had just begun putting out its golden wings as the sun sank lower and lower behind the trees.
There is something to be said about the shock and awe capabilities that Mother Nature has at her beck and call. She beckons and we respond with our inner animal, changing our human natures to respond in an animal sort of a way to quiet, intense silence that allows no thought of future, past or present to invade. Just the smell of flowers, the song of the bees and the hum of the tires on the road beneath.
Bruce Springsteen soul sang out on the car's audio system but it's magic too was worked over and chased out of my conscious hearing by the beauty of the world around me.
I reflected on absolutely nothing and heard almost nothing. Pausing the moment in the fast-forward world of business and pleasure -- this was bliss. I was just living the moment, travelling forward only physically and remaining abosultely still in a very zen manner.
That was when the bridge came to sight and I lost the zen. My stilled mind was filled with a furore that only in conjunction with the ubiquitous one could such a view of sheer magic be built. And then, the unthinkable happened.
I fell asleep.