Thin overcast and chilly this early Tuesday on California’s north coast — another day in the life.

And this morning, if you’re able to view it, the Eta Aquarids meteor shower will bombard the earth with debris off Halley’s Comet — meteoroids the pieces are called — with an estimated 1,000 ‘falling stars’ an hour hitting us at about 44 miles-per-second.
The event is unique, too, even for veteran sky-watchers — Jane Houston of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA: “This potential new shower is so new that astronomers aren’t sure what to expect.”
If those astro-brainiacs don’t know, who does?

My own scene this morning, however, ain’t pretty.

(Illustration found here).

Apparently, I’m back on foot again. Yesterday afternoon my Jeep Comanche wouldn’t start after I got off work, despite running fine eight hours earlier getting me to work. No engine turn over, no clicks, no nothing.
Although there were lights on the dash and my headlights worked, the whole system seemed dead as a doornail.
And a bit of shock to turn the ignition, expecting life and movement, but instead a faint click and silence — the brain responds by attempting to put me in some sort of dream sequence where nothing is real and everything has a weird shine.
Yet, reality has a way of proving itself.
I had to get the poor thing towed back to my apartment.

During the course of my life, I’ve been without the use of a vehicle on many occasions — I handle the situation better than most, especially men, who tend to go ape shit without transportation. I hate motor vehicles with an over-drawn imagination, so it really doesn’t effect me so much.

I hate to walk, though.
But my most-favorite wordsmith, Emily Dickinson, also was on foot one day — “A Bird Came Down the Walk” and life continued:

A Bird came down the Walk—
He did not know I saw—
He bit an Angleworm in halves
And ate the fellow, raw,

And then he drank a Dew
From a convenient Grass—
And then hopped sidewise to the Wall
To let a Beetle pass—

He glanced with rapid eyes
That hurried all around—
They looked like frightened Beads, I thought—
He stirred his Velvet Head

Like one in danger, Cautious,
I offered him a Crumb
And he unrolled his feathers
And rowed him softer home—

Than Oars divide the Ocean,
Too silver for a seam—
Or Butterflies, off Banks of Noon
Leap, plashless as they swim.

I just hope for no water when I get off work this afternoon — butterflies are pretty, and free.