Massing Near Sullust

Two days from now, seventeen years ago ...


Mice creak beneath burning stars,
Speaking volumes, cold control.


Terror, tender is the night
For which many Bothans died.
Could he, coo'ee, lee and lean
Out of hyperspace denied?


What's there to accept, a force
Life creates it, boomerangs
In the canyon, forest moon.


Darkest space contains no room.


And from the journal I'm reading, I finished this poem at 5:19 in the morning on April 1, 2000.


As I type this, I appreciate the irony that I wrote "Massing Near Sullust" with multiple references to the third-released but sixth chronological Star Wars film Return of the Jedi. A Sullust native named Nien Nunb (I always thought it was cool that his name combines the pronunciation of the German and English words for "no"!) appears as Lando Calrissian's copilot on the Millennium Falcon -- crap, you'd think I would remember "Millennium" has two n's without looking it up! -- in that film AND he appears as a Resistance member in The Force Awakens from two years ago! And the events of that film take place thirty years after Jedi does, and Nunb doesn't seem to have aged much.

Or maybe Sullustans don't in a way you and I would perceive it.


Ok, enough with my nerd for the day. Last night I got off work and I got out late. Meh, sometimes those counts just don't match up the first time, and they have to! Or I have to figure out why they don't. Anyway, by the time I got to church for our Wednesday Lenten service it was over ... which was ok, I found out that the Lenten drama last night was especially interesting. Something about two of Jesus' disciples sitting on the sidelines like they were in the dugout of a baseball stadium and talking about how Peter, James, John, Judas (oh yes, even the one who betrayed Jesus got to act) and the other "big guns" were walking with Jesus and performing miracles.


But they in the skit wouldn't because they felt they would be lacking in humility.


Then Jesus called them out of this false humility. At least, those are the parts I remember hearing about at Coffee With The Boys this morning. I was on my way away from there and by a local gas station I saw a police car stop another vehicle in the middle of the street. That's the second time this week I've seen police pull someone over; I was on my way to the office Monday and saw them take someone away right across the street as I got there! Not that the police shouldn't be arresting lawbreakers or living up to their mandate to serve and protect, I'm just amazed to see it so much lately here. Minot where we live is hardly crime-free, but it's often out of sight the arrests are made.


Power went out a few streets north of my house last night for a few hours.


And I heard this morning that was the result of someone driving away from pursuing police running into a local transformer! And now I've been on my feet mostly since four thirty this morning with a few power naps in between ... sometimes it's just hard to sleep and hard to pin down why. But that's ok too. And I did not forget my mother-in-law Sharon's birthday yesterday, but from what Martha told me she got some much needed peace and quiet. I've heard that the older you get the more of a gift, even a virtue that is. Certainly nothing like engaging in a galactic resistance movement, or even a local one!


David