February 11: You Are God, Lake Effect Snow Warning, God's Name

You are God.  You want to make a forest, something to hold the soil, lock up solar energy, and give off oxygen.  Wouldn't it be simpler just to rough in a slab of chemicals, a green acre of goo?

Dillard indulges in a common fantasy:  you are God.  Deity Dillard imagines making a forest to do all the things that forests do--soil retention, oxygen and solar energy generation.  It's not what a lot of people would do with divine powers.  There's winning lottery tickets and mansions.  Trips to Hawaii and Nobel Prizes in Literature.  Oh, yeah, there's also things like world peace and ending world hunger.

Tonight, if I were God, I would do one simple thing:  make sure it doesn't snow tonight.  No lake effect snow.  No arctic winds.  No snow plows blowing by my house at four o'clock in the morning.  Nope.  I'd use my divine breath to blow in warm air.

It's a simple dream.  This morning, I had to clear a mountain of heavy snow from my driveway.  It was cold and dark.  I could hear the snowplows screaming up and down neighboring streets.  For the 45 minutes I was shoveling, I invoked God's name.  Several times.  And I wasn't praying.

There's a lake effect snow warning in effect from 1 a.m. on Friday to 4 a.m. on Saturday.  Below-zero wind chills.  Zero visibility.  For me, it means another date with a shovel  tomorrow morning.  It is not going to be a good day.

Well, I need to get to bed.  If you were tuning in for a poem, I apologize.  I do have a Poet of the Week selected.  However, I am too tired for poetry.

Saint Marty is cold and tired and not God.