STORM Heaviest downpour in fifty years floods the dry gutters, brittle leaves block the down pipes and rain backs up to flow down inside glass of sliding doors and kitchen windows. Once, only the wealthiest of homeowners had water sculptures like these – my humour proves water soluble as towels prove no levee and we walk barefoot as beachcombers, room to room, turning off fridge, fans, computers, TV, lamps, safety switched now from light to dark. We’re lucky. The coastline was hit worst, universities and hospitals pitted and torn, traffic beached on its own islands, libraries swimming in mud and waist-high waters. * _the morning after …_ Excited news on social networks of vehicles pitted like golfballs, mudslides into luxury city apartments, Premier declaring the storm a Natural Disaster – keeping his shoes clean by walking the driest paths – TV news reporting the reportage of Facebook users, folded in narrative PoMo style, furry footage and hysterical audio. Not so much excitement in this town since last footy finals. Men climbing walls onto rooftops, sealing skylights, ants at their nest; schools mopping up, preparing doorstop lessons on Climate Change and Nature’s Fury. * The Bassendean Shopping Centre – Proudly Hawaiian – copped a bucketing. Coles Supermarket ceiling fell in; the Vietnamese fruit and veg shop, Australia Post and The Centre Café all flooded to kneehigh level. Yellow jacketed workmen swarm the roof, wasps at their nest, and the Indian trolley man compares disaster stories with the woman with a fag in her mouth and a mixed exhibition of tats on every exposed surface. ‘Fuckin hell, what’d you do then?!’ Magic Happens yesterday replaced by Shit Happens today. That’s the way it is. Spare a thought for those who sleep in doorways and under bridges as State Emergency volunteers race by to plug up damaged domiciles and insurance assessors take snaps and key in their findings. -- Andrew http://hispirits.blogspot.com/ http://frankshome.org/AndrewBurke.html