flooding and desert

What an odd day. It rained yesterday, last night and into the morning, flooding much of H-town. As the waters receded, two women were found drowned in their truck, which they had driven straight into ten feet of water.

It is incredibly muggy and hot but I still have hopes for cooler weather on the horizon. At the very least I will get it in Michigan at the end of the month.

Saturday I watched a film called The King is Alive. The premise is that a group of tourists are on a bus being driven through the desert in Africa. The driver depends on a broken compass and they become stranded. One of the tourists is an actor. He writes out King Lear and the rest spend many days learning lines and acting out the play. What makes it interesting, besides the cinematography and the desert, which I always find fascinating, is the interplay between the stranded tourists. As their masks of sanity are worn down by the constantly blowing sand, they begin to discover themselves.

So, lighthearted romp? No. Dark and twisted and as claustrophobic as the wide open sands of Namibia can be? Absolutely.