Hurricane Irma

Expectation is part of the stability of day-to-day life. Irma came through and wiped the illusion of that away. The unexpected lost all of its’ charm of spontaneity, and gained the essence of terror and dread. The email was out and the school was in a calm frenzy, turning this way and that, everyone trying to find someone to piggy back on. I myself had more than one body to fret over and so I called my mom. She and my brother are very strong willed and hardheaded people, and with her faith spiking, she refused to leave and prompted me to stay as well. Not the answer I was expecting to come from the other end of the line when I first dialed those numbers and now I was at odds with the most important person in my life. Do I go and protect myself? Do I stay and protect them? I felt as if I was being pulled, each limb in a different direction, most of them towards the practical idea of escaping to safety, but one remained firmly planted at my moms house, only miles away.

The wind and rain are unfurling around our house like sheets of glass shattering against a hard surface. Pine cones from the trees linger ever so slightly above the roof are pelting the shingles, making a god awful gun shot noise. The branches are holding fast but I fear they too will weaken and take refuge in my living room. There are boards nailed to the windows and the water hasn’t leaked in yet, the dogs are by me and my brother is sleeping through the whole thing, no surprise, that boy can sleep through just about any life threatening disaster. I pray and read from my favorite book and turn the lights off and light a small candle to bring some peace in the entirety of this calamity. It will be over soon, we’ll be okay.

The sky went dark yesterday and the winds whip around us, pushing things around as if I pushed a chair back into its place at the table. The rain has been persistent and only grows heavier, and it has started to build in the roads, to where men and must trudge through as if in a snow bank. The windows are now nailed shut from their continuous racket, banging against the pane with the help of the wind pushing and pulling. I’ve taken the family into the cellar and the girls have put together a basket of provisions in case the storm persists. I’m afraid of what this could mean to the progress in our little town. What will be left if the water continues to rise and the wind lifts us all away. Nothing I imagine.

Hurricanes today aren’t the same as those in the history books. Climate change has brought the era of the heat and with it the super storms. We stopped building after Amy destroyed three quarters of the country and instead began to take advantage of the underground, taking inspiration from burrowing animals and insects, creating tunnels and passageways, homes and civilization underneath the world we once loved. The hurricane they predicted to be the size of the country is set to hit today. Even though we have refuge underground, there is always the concern that the ceilings to this new world were weakened from our presence and could pose the potential threat of caving in if a big enough storm came along.

A world where the weather is reversed causes the problem of physical space on earth into a solution. Rather than tearing the buildings down, storms neatly stack them on top of each other. Flooding never happens, but there are large droughts because all of the water in the soil and plants are sucked into the sky, where the storm deposits it into the ocean. The world becomes one of skyscrapers that truly reach the sky and brown earth, it soon becomes uninhabitable by vegetation and there are food shortages. The drought leads to the destruction and collapse of weaker buildings, causing piles of debris to form in large cities.

The unexpected, can happen even when you feel safe underground. The walls could crumble, the ceiling could cave in, the doors could burst open and the whole underground could flood. What do you do then? You can’t panic or you’ll drown. You can’t stay calm and do nothing or you’ll drown. When it’s just you and no one else, it’s easier to look after one body, but 4 is a big bite to chew when it comes to life threatening storms. We are waiting one out right now and the thuds of threes being thrown back to the ground echo, bouncing off the walls of the inner city. The lights flicker on and off but the power stands strong