The Middle of the Dark

For reals. Dig it. The universe will always amaze. I suppose I should say something about me. Not much to say. My mom is very sick. I'm working 10 and 12 hour days. Gathering material for my next novel. They form, these books, like planets almost; gathering lose dust from every corner of creation, accreting until something round and significant emerges. Sometimes something bigger runs into them and they go boom or become something better. Sometimes the process takes years. Decades. I seriously do not have time to be building novels on a planetary scale. Message to Darby: think moons. Asteroids are also nice.

My brother Aaron sent me this photo taken of the tornado that struck Osage this month - credit unknown, but good Lord, this person had ice for veins. I'm sure most of you have seen the floods/tornadoes/general calamity on the news. Waterloo, Cedar Falls and of course Cedar Rapids and Iowa City, most of all, all led the national news for nearly a week now. Parts of CR looked like New Orleans after Katrina. It's been the worst anyone has ever seen it and while the water has receeded almost into its banks here, many west side businesses are damaged, totaled, still closed. Two bridges remain closed. Most importantly, many homes have been lost. All week I've been left with this fatigue, this residue of anxiety and if I ever thought I knew what it was to be in the center of impending disaster, I had no clue.

After work today I went around on the bike with my camera to get a sense of downtown after the flood; even though the water remains very very high, the river has fallen nearly 10 feet since yesterday, and the bridges reopened this morning. Some of them; Park and 6th street may be out of commission for a while, and the railroad bridge? You can see what the force of the water did to the rail itself: The river broke the bridge in two: On Tuesday the rumor was that the broken half travelled down river and took out the 11th street bridge as well, but this didn't happen. The east side did nearly flood as a result of the breach the bridge made in the levee wall, which volunteers from all over the city secured with very hard work: Sandbags also saved the Fairview cemetery, where the flood waters attempted to end run the dikes. That cast iron fence there in the bottom ? It's nearly ten feet off the ground in most places. The water just two days ago exposed only its very tips. If t

For as long as I've been interested in politics and journalism, I've always been interested in Tim Russert. Meet The Press is always a big part of my Sunday, and during every Tuesday night this primary season and for every other I can remember, I was tuned to NBC. I was shocked to learn he had died today. Right now MSNBC is running a sustained eulogy delivered by friends and colleagues of his, all of them commenting on his importance as a public figure, and as a man. I will say of Tim Russert that he proves the American dream: we live in a country divided between high and low brow, red state and blue state, conservative and liberal, rich and poor and here was a working class kid from Buffalo that proved smarts, integrity, persistence and objectivity are all American things.

Today I woke up to more rumors - the water had been turned off, the town evacuated - part of it was, anyway - and a few harsh truths. My mom had to see the doctor this morning because of severe pain and very high blood pressure. I'm in the waiting room running down info on the deterorating situation in town on one hand while at the same time gathering the same kind of sense of what was happening to my mom. There are few perfect storms in life, and this was one. Thank God my mom is out of the woods; unfortunately the woods are part of a much larger general foresty region that the docor says is dense and widespread and we'll know we're out of it when we're out of it. Same with the flood. The river level is receding some, but it rained today and will tonight and tomorrow; a tornado just destroyed a boy scout camp in Sioux City, killing four apparently, and now that same system is headed this way. It seems Biblical, the weather these past few weeks. I helped for a fe

So about noon at work today someone says they've closed all the bridges in town because of the flooding river, and if you live on the east side, like me, it's time to go now. And it certainly was, since one of those bridges, the 6th street railroad bridge, failed and collapsed around that same time. My brother left his work a little bit later and picked me up. We along with thousands of others made this long trek around the city to get over to the east side, eventually finding a way through across Conger. The houses on Sans Souci island, always in danger of flooding, were under water up to the second floor windows. So we made it back, stocked up on bottled water - getting the last cases at the Hy-Vee - and prepared for - what? We weren't sure. Rumors flew and fly pretty fast still; they were turning the water off. The lights. The 11th street bridge failed too (it didn't). So far things are okay, for us, but the river is yet to crest and more rain is coming. W