Some random thoughts on this first “real” morning for the past week in Central Florida, after Irma came through.

That was a trauma we went through here in the state of Florida. Knowing a huge storm was coming was like being forced to play Russian roulette. Like having a gun pointed at your head for a week. Sunday night, the last news I could get was that it had veered off track and was headed right for us. Then the internet went down. As a matter of fact, it seems to have come right over my house, but thankfully it had weakened enough that it didn’t flatten everything.

There’s a tendency after a traumatic event to push it away, to bury it in being busy (and now there’s a lot more to do, which makes that easier). The thought goes something like this: “well I didn’t die, I’m not even really hurt, so it must have been nothing.” But that’s the brain trying to heal so it can move on. I’m doing the opposite. I’m sitting with it. I’m honoring it by giving it some attention. I’m not denying that I feel roughed up, that my emotions are off-kilter. I’m moving back into my routine slowly and mindfully.

We drove around the immediate ten-mile area yesterday. If there’s such a thing as driving gingerly, that’s what we did. It was a gorgeous afternoon… nothing like a hurricane to make the air sparkle and shine. Storm damage generally got lighter as you traveled to the east. Not much damage in Sanford, the next town over, except for one street where an entire line of big trees was uprooted and lay fallen toward the south, like dominoes. A little micro tornado must have gone up the block. Those are the worst; I hate those little mofos.

This storm showed me that I’ve gotten complacent about the threat of hurricanes. I’m taking them more seriously now. Back when I lived in California I was totally prepared for a major earthquake, so it’s not like I don’t know how to do this. There’s a whole list of precautions and actions you can take. It’s not complicated. But I wasn’t ready for this, and I had to scramble, and it added to a feeling of powerlessness. I had a dream last night in which I was supposed to give a keynote speech at a dinner, and I had forgotten to print out my script and couldn’t access it online; the time of my talk kept coming closer and closer and I felt this dread of letting everyone down who was depending on me, this fear of total unpreparedness. Don’t need Freud to figure that one out.

I’m not specifically worried about the next storm, Jose. Right now that looks like it’s no threat to Florida. I’m not panicking about that one. But I do expect more big hurricanes will be coming through here more often. I’m not leaving Florida, in fact I’m planning to die here—of natural causes—so it’s necessary to start living differently. Be more on guard; have more contingency plans. If a micro tornado hits my house all bets are off, but I should be ready for a big, blustery old storm now and then.

Another random thought: for the past week, the furthest thing from my mind was Donald J. Trump and whether he might squeeze on a pair of jeans and come down to hand me and my neighbors some bottled water. The ins and outs of politics seemed very far away, and my concerns were exclusively local. I’m not reading the news in general. I know what I want to know, which is that the people I care about all came through this intact. The beauty of this post-traumatic moment is that we all know the same thing: with that gun pointed at our heads, we thought only of each other, and wished each other well. Something to ponder as we pick up the pieces.

Thanks to Kevin Spear and the Orlando Sentinel for talking PechaKucha — first! — in this week’s series on “Searching for the Soul of Orlando.”

Tickets for our next show at the new Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts are still available, here:

http://www.drphillipscenter.org/shows-and-events/Shows-Events/Variety/201031-pechakucha-night-orlando-v17.stml

I got the message early, standing on the roof of our house as a boy, holding a garden hose and helping my father water down the wooden shingles as a huge fire burned all around us, the air black and full of cinders. And later, as earthquakes ejected me from the shower or shook the contents of my house into a heap. Huddling in the core of a hallway as a hurricane bore down. Holding a rag to my face on 9/11 so I wouldn’t inhale the pulverized dust of the World Trade Center as I ran through the streets of Manhattan.

I got the message: no one is safe.

We all want to be safe; it’s at the core of what it means to be human. We want safety for ourselves, for our loved ones. And yet it’s an illusion, safety. It’s temporary. Our passage into this world is dangerous, our time here is fraught with violence and threat, and our inevitable exit causes pain to ourselves and those we love. So we need to remind ourselves that safety is not the highest value.

I don’t want to be safe. I want to be strong. I want to be strong enough to know I can look into a fire or earthquake or hurricane without flinching. I want to be strong enough to look straight into the eyes of someone who does not love me and be unmoved. I want the peace of knowing that whatever happens, I’ll be alright because while I was here and while the power was in me, I stayed true to myself and did my best and loved the people I love with my whole heart.

I don’t want safety. I want wisdom. I want to have wisdom enough to see that the desire for revenge and more violence are deeply powerless stances, no matter how “tough” they look on the outside. I want wisdom enough to acknowledge that terror and violence reside in my own heart… and while I can’t eradicate them there any more than I can eradicate them from the world, I can overcome them. Time and again. Though false ideas of loss and indignity and offense keep coming back and fanning the flames of my own resentment and anger and hatred, I can put those flames out. Somewhere inside me I have the wisdom to know that’s all I can do that will make any real difference. Really living peace and love… not just saying the words, but living them when your soul cries out for justice and meaning and there doesn’t seem to be any… these are heroic acts.

The world seems to fall apart with increasing frequency. The world outside me, and the one in my head. What can I do about it, today or any other day when it seems so hopeless? Only the small, little heroic things that we all can do, the only things that matter in the end. Put out the flames. Sweep up the debris. Walk back out into the sunshine. Hand the rag I’m using to cover my mouth to someone else who hasn’t got one. Put my arm around somebody who’s even more broken than I am. Tell them No one is safe… but you’re safe with me.

No, Mr. Bond, I Expect You to DIET!

If you weren’t there, you can’t imagine how exciting it was to arrive at the theater when this movie opened in 1971. To my wide adolescent eyes, the poster alone (featuring a gazillion diamonds in space, stuff blowing up, and Sean Connery flanked by Lana Wood and Jill St. John in bikinis) promised an evening of pure guilty pleasure.

Sad to say that 40-some years later it’s a guilty pleasure of a different kind… indifferently directed, filled with unattractive performances, and with a dud script that’s especially painful after On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. The Nixon-era Vegas locations are so surreally ugly that you half expect Hunter S. Thompson and his Samoan attorney to come ripping through in their great red shark.

And to paraphrase Hemingway, any movie that leaves you idly speculating that it would have been better with George Lazenby is a bad movie.

From Dr. No through Thunderball, Sean Connery had the grace and alertness of a panther on the prowl. In Diamonds are Forever, he’s just a jaded middle-aged movie star walking through a role he no longer takes seriously. Paunchy, jowly and sporting a greasy toupee, he looks more helplessly irritated as the movie drags on. Toward the end, when two girls send him crashing into tables and chairs, you realize that if he was any fatter and his pink tie any shorter, he’d be Oliver Hardy.

On the plus side… Jill St. John is a nice surly Bond girl — just the woman to help you start to get over Diana Rigg. Always a terrible actress, here she basically gives up, and unlike Connery, lazy indifference suits her. (If Bob Hope had only played Blofeld and growled leeringly at her, the movie would be perfect.) Although the chases inaugurate the “Smokey and the Bandit” vibe of the 70s, they do feature a cool red Mustang and a clumsy Moon Buggy. I still have the Corgi Toys of both. Finally, there’s the fantastic title song. If you listen to the words, it expresses not just the Bond character’s jaded contempt, but that of the whole cast and crew.

So, if I haven’t made it clear, I love this sleazy movie. Is it worthy to stand with a series that includes OHMSS, Goldfinger, and Casino Royale? Irrelevant, Mr. Bond!