I haven’t been on here in 2 months.  Seems like yesterday was the 2011 Super Outbreak. 

Wake up to tornado siren at 5:30.  Sleep. 

Wake up to tornado and tornado siren at 5:45.  *Hides in pantry*

Lose the tree in front of my window.

Go to work having showered in the dark listening to the wind.

Work closes at noon to allow adequate time to get home because Birmingham was gridlocked.

Storms start to fire back up after power comes back on. 

Remember Japan conference call at 5:00 pm. 

Mom calls 5 minutes in.  Unconfirmed F5 from Tuscaloosa headed straight for Birmingham and Homewood.

Jet back to work to avoid my 3rd story apartment, while trying to regain access to the Japan conference call.

Tuscaloosa is leveled.

The same unconfirmed F5 pummels downtown Birmingham, leveling, killing and destroying.

Continues on.

Hang out at work until another cell passes overhead. 

Dinner alone at the Walmart McDonald’s.

Come back home.  Watch live feed.

Hear reports of Tuscaloosa receipts falling in GADSDEN, 125 MILES AWAY.

2nd tornado hits Cullman.

There are 375,000 Alabama Power customers with no electricity.  Thankfully, my time among those numbers is over.

Maybe it’s about to all be over in the next hour.  Maybe.

This has been one for the books.  I can only give my account, and there are thousands of other people with other stories about places other than Birmingham.  Keep everybody in your prayers.  

Dude, STOP pounding on my neighbor’s door.  They are NOT home.  Coordinate your meeting times better and let the rest of us sleep.

“It’s only that…steady rain…that…sometimes may affect the roadways a little bit………what I mean is that you….might have to use your windshield wipers a little bit…ya know…”

Birmingham’s finest weather man

If you are at first lonely, be patient.
If you’ve not been alone much, or if when you were,
you weren’t okay with it, then just wait.
You’ll find it’s fine to be alone once you’re embracing it.

We could start with the acceptable places,
the bathroom, the coffee shop, the library.
Where you can stall and read the paper,
where you can get your caffeine fix and sit and stay there.
Where you can browse the stacks and smell the books.
You’re not supposed to talk much anyway so it’s safe there.

There’s also the gym. 
If you’re shy you could hang out with yourself
in mirrors, you could put headphones in.

And there’s public transportation, because we all gotta go places.

And there’s prayer and meditation.
No one will think less if you’re hanging
with your breath seeking peace and salvation.

Start simple. Things you may have previously
based on your avoid being alone principals.

The lunch counter. Where you will be surrounded
by chow-downers. Employees who only have an hour
and their spouses work across town
and so they — like you — will be alone.

Resist the urge to hang out with your cell phone.

When you are comfortable with eat lunch and run,
take yourself out for dinner. A restaurant with
linen and silverware. You’re no less intriguing
a person when you’re eating solo dessert to
cleaning the whipped cream from the dish with your finger.
In fact, some people at full tables will wish they were where you were.

Go to the movies, where it is dark and soothing.
Alone in your seat amidst a fleeting community.

And then, take yourself out dancing to a
club where no one knows you.
Stand on the outside of the floor till the lights
convince you more and more and the music shows you.
Dance like no one’s watching…because, they’re probably not.
And, if they are, assume it is with best of human intentions.
The way bodies move genuinely to beats
is, after all, gorgeous and affecting.
Dance until you’re sweating, and beads of
perspiration remind you of life’s best things,
down your back like a brook of blessings.

Go to the woods alone, and the
trees and squirrels will watch for you.
Go to an unfamiliar city, roam the streets,
there’re always statues to talk to
And benches made for sitting give strangers
a shared existence if only for a minute
and these moments can be so uplifting
and the conversations you get in by sitting alone
on benches might’ve never happened
had you not been there by yourself

Society is afraid of alonedom, like lonely hearts
are wasting away in basements, like people must
have problems if, after a while, nobody is dating them.
but lonely is a freedom that breaths easy and
weightless and lonely is healing if you make it.

You could stand, swathed by groups and mobs
or hold hands with your partner, look both
further and farther for the endless quest for company.
But no one’s in your head and by the time you
translate your thoughts, some essence of them
may be lost or perhaps it is just kept.

Perhaps in the interest of loving oneself,
perhaps all those sappy slogans from preschool

over to high school’s groaning were tokens for
holding the lonely at bay.
Because if you’re happyin your head
then solitude is blessed and alone is okay.

It’s okay if no one believes like you.
All experience is unique, no one has the same
synapses, can’t think like you, for this be relieved,
keeps things interesting lifes magic things in reach.

And it doesn’t mean you’re not connected,
that communitie’s not present,
just take the perspective you get from being
one person in one head and feel the effects of it.
take silence and respect it. if you have an art that
needs a practice, stop neglecting it.
if your family doesn’t get you, or religious sect
is not meant for you, don’t obsess about it.

you could be in an instant surrounded if you needed it
If your heart is bleeding make the best of it
There is heat in freezing, be a testament.