Midlife Meditation

One hour into my commute, I learned it had barely begun. Strangely enough, I foresaw this in a dream. In the dream, I was on I-5, headed south from downtown. For the first minute, it looked like I had the highway to myself. Then I saw the brake lights: traffic was completely stopped. I consulted my phone, looking for an alternate route, and saw something a lot like this: Every road, whether highway, byway, or surface road was dark red. There was no way for me to get home: the entire city was gridlocked. Oddly, there was no snow in the dream, which then morphed to me having dinner with the Trump family. Their servants were squirting beverages into their mouths from squeeze bottles, because apparently they'd never had to learn to use drinking glasses. There were two trays of food on the table, and both were beef, so I was going hungry. It didn't bother them at all that they were snubbing their dinner guest: after all, they'd won the election without the help...

Portlanders are calling it Snowmageddon and Snowpocalypse. And yes, it is quite a winter storm: snow that turned my usual 35-minute commute into two hours Thursday afternoon; wind that knocked limbs off trees; more snow that closed schools yesterday, and continues to disrupt business today; and now freezing rain on top of that. It will probably be tomorrow night before the Willamette Valley starts to thaw out. And it will. Which is why the "mageddon" and "pocalypse" suffixes are just plain silly. Three and a half days of playing in the snow (which is what Amy and I did yesterday and today, both skiing and snowshoeing our neighborhood) do not the end of the world make. I do have to admit that this weather is out of the ordinary. The last time I lost a full day of work to a snowstorm was December, 2008. Of course, then it was a full week, and the snow and cold continued for a second week, disrupting the Christmas holiday. I was trapped in Forest Grove for that s...