RIVER CITY JOURNAL: LATE SPRING STORMS PRODUCE A HODGEPODGE

There must be something in the lightning that affects your brain waves, not to mention sizzling the toaster oven and VCR.

Sometimes thoughts rattle around in my head. Does this ever happen to you? Some examples:

The weather these past few days has been puzzling. First off, it has been too cool. I think this is what was called blackberry winter when I was growing up. A cool, stormy spell would come along just as the wild blackberry vines -- better known as plain old briars most of the year -- were blooming.

Adding to the weather puzzle have been the quick changes in the weather. Out the window the sun is shining, but by the time you walk outdoors there is a downpour. I'm told this is like the weather in New Orleans. On the whole, I'd just as soon y'all would keep it down there.

The sudden turnabouts have made for some interesting skies. Just the other morning I saw billowing clouds in hues of blue and gray with shafts of golden sunlight streaking through. It was gorgeous. It reminded me of the baptistry scenes that used to be so common in a lot of Baptist churches 30 or 40 years ago. I always thought those paintings were accurate depictions of either Heaven or Southeast Missouri right after a downpour. Either way the scenes were both refreshing and soothing. Nowadays it seems like churches are plainer and, in some respects, duller. Even the stained glass is so jumbled up sometimes you can't tell exactly whether you're looking at Moses parting the Red Sea or Jesus walking on the water. All you know for sure is they probably wouldn't have used all that blue glass if there wasn't water involved somehow.

During one of the dry spells between the past week's cloudbursts, I managed to pull a muscle in my back. I am learning -- although I'll admit I'm not the best student -- that my body just isn't capable of doing a lot of things that were so simple and taken for granted a few years ago. The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. Boy, does that have new meaning these days.

What I never knew, since I've never had a pulled muscle in my back before, is how interconnected the human body is. Suddenly I am very aware that my back muscles play a big role in standing up, for example. Several people have wondered why I look so goofy getting out of a chair. The truth is I think I have discovered my body's center of gravity, and if I curve myself over a certain way before lifting myself up with my legs, I can avoid most of the pulled-muscle pain.

Of course, a lifetime of standing up without a second thought has, apparently, resulted in a lot of bad standing-up habits, which means I still gasp for breath when I forget to use my new technique.

There is some good news about my wrenched back though. A few days earlier I pulled a muscle somewhere in my chest -- yes, trying to do something athletic with a creaking body -- and it hurt every time I held up my left arm. Even though I tried real hard not to raise my left arm very much, which is what even the best doctors recommend in cases like this, I occasionally forgot, resulting in a sharp pain. Thanks to my new pulled muscle, I don't even notice the original pain. See, there are little things to be thankful for once in a while.

I've been lucky in my lifetime regarding health and bodily injuries. No broken arms or legs, that sort of thing. About 15 years ago I did manage to take quite a spill on an icy sidewalk as I was taking a blind piano tuner home from our house. Poor Burl, who had been instructed to stay in the car until I got around to the passenger side, was considerably alarmed when I didn't show up. How was he to know I was lying flat on my back just a few feet away, unable to speak because I had landed so hard I couldn't breathe. I remember watching a woman who started across the slippery street toward us -- perhaps to offer some aid -- and saw a blind man with the car door half open calling my name while I sprawled on the sidewalk in a daze. She did a pirouette right there in the middle of the street and headed the other way. I wonder to this day what she told her family that night.

The upshot of that incident was a couple of cracked ribs which forced me to sleep in one position for nearly six weeks. Remind me some day to tell you about how Burl would get into a car -- touching the molding around the door, feeling the dash, rubbing the seat upholstery -- and say, "Is this an '84 Buick?" Then he would add, grinning: "Light blue with a white top?"

~R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.