I was burned out from exhaustion, buried in the hail
Poisoned in the bushes an’ blown out on the trail
Hunted like a crocodile, ravaged in the corn
Come in, she said
I’ll give ya shelter from the storm
Bob Dylan, Shelter From the Storm
The maniac keeps tweet-screeching and attending assemblies of the love struck, news outlets keep up with it all at ear-cracking decibels, the seas are eating Louisiana, the midwest floods smashed up poor farmers and Native Americans and where oh where does one go to take shelter from the clatter of everything breaking apart?
It is not all coming to a wretched end, not yet anyway, so it is a requirement to find sanctuary in something, in some place, in unremarked-upon daily kindnesses and beauty. One can be made mad by all the other stuff.
Maybe these will help.
The Bird of Paradise is blooming at Longwood Gardens, the great Elm still stands at the visitor’s entrance, and the jasmine is in the full blast of its aroma in the conservatories.
The Bird has extended its red-orange and persian-blue blossoms like wild hair, its beak shapely as that of a heron. It looks like the head of an elegant beast as a fledgling, a miraculous creature passing into this impure world.
Trees are as close to a no BS being as any of us will see. 
They get beaten up, hollowed out, struck by fire, whipped by storms and so when I see this comrade, the last of its kind (in this area), giving forth leaves and swinging in the blue, well well, I smile and smile: “In an article written in 1986 for Longwood’s staff magazine”: The remaining elm is the sole example of its kind left on Longwood property and it remains a magnificent specimen, though its prospects’ for the future are doubtful. ”With a future that was once unsure, the tree still stands twenty-three years later. At the base of the tree you can see a large wound from a branch that tore down the trunk during a summer storm in 1998.”* The Elm endures. We should all be so tough and clear in our virtues.
The scent of the jasmine is immersive and so honeyed in its invitation that I think it could lift any anguish for the time one is encompassed. Bring your face close. Oh, go all the way. Bury your head in the midst of the flowers. 
And finally this … which asks that you submit to some sadness first.
A week or so ago a dog came into Lamancha from Tennessee, a tri-color border collie struck by a car as it was trying to make its way back to the home of the brutes who had thrown him away. Its left leg was amputated, its right rendered useless. But it arrived here, where a group of volunteers rallied round him. Now he rides out in a red wagon to the field by the kennels for every shift to be held and fussed over; arrangements are being made to fit him with a set of wheels, and it is only a matter of time before he is adopted. He rolls on his back to pee a fountain, whee, and seems always to wear that dog smile lovers of the species will recognize.
I’ll take any sanctuary that says “Here is something to love. Be thankful you were here to be a part of it.” This is how we return to the shattering of the days.
