Captain's Log:

The Apocalypse may be upon us.

The air inside the house smells of smoke.

Ash falls from the sky like a drizzling rain.

The outside air burns the eyes on contact. The smoke is everywhere. Where once one could see down the street, now there is only a gray haze with barely visible outlines of what once was.

Driving over bridges is much like propelling one's self into an unknown abyss. 

Although the temperature is in the upper 90s, the beach has the gray, foggy look of a cold winter's day.

The conditions have been this way for days on end. 

I rarely watch the news as I prefer to speculate about my surroundings. I am working on this, but there is only so much time in the day and speculating takes a great deal of time. 

In this case, however, I reviewed a bit of news and it turns out there are multiple fires currently burning in south Georgia and north Florida. 

When living in smoky conditions such as this, it is at first annoying and smelly. Then you realize that you haven't seen that beautiful clear blue Florida sky for days and you miss what you so often took for granted. Then you start to wonder if it will ever clear up, as the conditions only get worse with each passing day. 

A torrential downpour of rain, complete with thunder, lightning and tree-toppling wind does not leave a lasting effect on the smoke invading all life.

This is not the time to become despondent. 

Once you resign yourself to the idea that this is not, in fact the end of the world, you can take necessary precautions and then take a bit of time to view it in a new light aside from its negative effects.

On occasion, I silently pretended that I was walking through a post-apocalyptic world, discovering new territory and remains. I looked at the world anew. I imagined that I had never before been to this strange world of smoke and haze.

I asked myself, "What is that just our of sight? A person walking this way? Nothingness? A building? Steaming remains of what once was?"

At the beach, the horizon line was not visible, nor was the rest of the beach beyond 300 yards. It was as if we stood on an isolated spot of water and sand, all to ourselves. Strange and magical.

It was during this time and the questioning mindset that I found myself living in the moment. It felt as if we were in a living memory where none of the images or forms were clear. So many things appeared just out of reach or just out of our control...a lucid dream of sorts.

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Today we have relief from the smoke, tomorrow may be different. The fires continue to rage, so it is likely that our smokey world will persist for a time. In the meantime, I will-and encourage you to do the same-amuse myself with the occasional thought that undiscovered remains exist just beyond my sight behind a blanket of gray haze.