Good Night, Irene: Among Storms and Spirits, the Sea Carries Me Home

 

There’s something strangely familiar and magical about the eye of a hurricane—how it can be so quiet and full of repose while everything around it breaks.

Seemingly a paradox, but more of a metaphysical dialectic—the center of the storm being still and pausing time for a moment-- like so many of nature’s sublime offerings fr
om solar eclipse quietude to surreal sweeping devastation of a tsunami. Hurricanes feel unique in the ability to encompass an entire catalog of attributes that touch each aspect of human awe. The eye, especially, as it offers us awe quite like the stillness that feels briefly a lot like death. Or maybe like being born.

My grandmother died just after sunrise on August 26, 2011, in Wilmington, North Carolina, as Hurricane Irene reached her peak just offshore. A Category 3 system, Irene spun her spiral right past the coast I’d grown up on. It wasn’t the most powerful or devastating hurricane I, or anyone had seen, but for me it felt ancient. Elemental. As if she wasn’t just passing by but calling someone home.

My grandmother Ethel Booth—fierce, kind, and luminously wise—was 93. Her mind had been unraveling slowly from dementia, though there were moments in those last weeks when she’d snap back into a clarity so precise, it was like watching cumulonimbus and stratus clouds part in the middle of a tempestuous squall. On several occasions I would be in the middle of what I believed to be a conversation between me and her. Only to realize that she was talking to people who weren’t in the room in the sense that I was.

One afternoon, my grandmother looked beyond me and said, almost casually, “I don’t want to get wet.” There was no rain that day. The sky was still. But momentarily my hubris intimated to me that I knew what she meant. She didn’t want to drown in the storm of forgetting. She wanted to ride out on the wind.

Light. Dry. Unbound.

Hurricanes as Living Things

Meteorologists will tell you hurricanes form when warm, moist air over the ocean begins to rise. This conjuring creates a vacuum beneath it, and more air rushes rapidly in. The Coriolis effect— caused by the magical physics of Earth’s rotation—makes this whole system begin to spin. Over time, that churning becomes a storm, and the storm becomes a being.

NOAA describes hurricanes as the most powerful weather events on Earth. One storm can release more energy than all the world’s power plants combined. But science only tells part of the

story. If you’ve ever stood on the coast as the outer bands roll in—sky bruised, surf pulling harder, air electric—you know hurricanes carry something else. A presence. A spirit.

The Taíno people, Indigenous to the Caribbean, knew this long before satellites or spaghetti models. They believed hurricanes were the breath of Juracán, the god of wind and chaos. Juracán lived atop El Yunque, a mountain that remains shrouded in cloud and legend. When he stirred, the skies would boil, the seas would rise, and lives would shift. The Spanish took the word juracán, reshaped it into huracán, and passed it on to English. But the sacred heart of that word—the knowing that storms are messengers—remains.

The Ocean Is Where I Remember Who I Am

I was raised on this coast of southeastern North Carolina. And, the swimming, surfing, paddling that came to me as a young child (and that I’ve held so close my entire life) has been an embodied and enacted talisman that has saved my life in so many different ways and different times. The ocean raised me, and at once renewed me and sanded me down, taught me to pay attention. Each wave, each paddle stroke, is a small kind of prayer.

I paddle until I find myself again. Sometimes it takes hours. Sometimes it takes miles. But the water always answers.

Today, I’m an English professor at UNC Chapel Hill. I write in the health and environmental humanities, exploring the ways bodies, environment (especially blue aquatic ones), and language intersect. But it all traces back to the ocean. My first real questions about life—about divinity, about death, about the soul—they all rose up between waves.

I learned to listen to water from my mother and my grandmother. They gave me the sea not just as a playground, but as a teacher in much the same way as Neruda intimates needing the sea because “it teaches me.”. Relatedly, the ocean is often and always where I return to make sense of things in much of the same way that Eliot interpellates certain spaces of relations that can situate oneself “at the still point of the turning world”. The profound liminality of the interstice of ocean, land, and sky is where I returned when I knew my grandmother’s time was near. This is the same mindful sojourn I make (and have made multitudinous times) for the repose that the beaches and Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Southeastern North Carolina have always given me.

The Sacred Spiral

Hurricane Irene had been born far out in the Atlantic. She gathered herself off the coast of the Lesser Antilles, fed on warm currents, grew metaphysical teeth and bone. By the time Irene reached Southeastern North Carolina, she had become a vast hurricane—so wide her wingspan stretched hundreds of miles.

But it wasn’t just her size. It was her timing.

The morning my grandmother died; the winds outside had that waiting quality—like breath held just a moment too long. Her chest rose and fell. And then... it didn’t. There was no drama. No gust. Just a stillness that felt complete.

Later, I looked at satellite images of Irene and saw the spiraling storm just off our coast, like a great eye watching the edge of the continent. Irene had skirted Southeastern North Carolina, not striking directly, but making her presence known. After Wilmington, Hurricane Irene continued up the East Coast, making landfall in New Jersey and marching through New York and New England. Across the U.S. and the Caribbean, Irene left behind at least 44 lives lost—most taken by water vis-à-vis flooding, by trees surrendering to wind, and by the chaos that follows when earth and sky collide.

But inside my grandmother’s home in the Pine Valley neighborhood of Wilmington—where she had lived since the late 1960s, founding and directing the guidance and counseling program for New Hanover County Schools, and then in retirement enjoying her yard, the beach, or the golf course—the storm sounded different. It was softer somehow, more like a breath being released. While others braced for rising waters, we watched my grandmother rise with the tide, carried not by panic or fear, but by something elemental—like gravity, like grace.

Dozens of lives were lost. Billions in damage. But that morning, she had only taken one from me. And even then, it didn’t feel like taking. It felt like lifting.

In Stormlight: Rising Through the Eye

I think often now about what my grandmother said— “I don’t want to get wet.”

At first, it struck me as simple. But over time, her words have come to feel like a mantra. A quiet declaration of strength.

Granny lived her life with clarity, calm, and intention. She led with vision—not for personal glory, but for the good of others. As the founding Director of Guidance and Counseling for New Hanover County Schools, she helped shepherd the system through desegregation. Long before justice became a catchphrase again, she embodied it. Her strength was rooted in empathy.

She moved through life like a boundary current—steady, but powerful enough to shape coasts.

As matriarch, educator, advocate, and friend, she helped others navigate stormy waters with grace and grit. Her presence remains in every life she touched—an enduring light. A true North.

“I don’t want to get wet,” she told me.
She didn’t mean she feared the storm.
She meant she didn’t want to be swallowed by it. She wanted to rise—not sink.

The Taíno believed hurricanes could carry the souls of the dead, spiraling them from this world to the next—a sacred journey, a stairwell of storm and wind.
I believe Irene was her vessel.

And now, when I paddle out after a storm—or even on stiller days—catching those long, glassy swells that follow in its wake, I still feel her nearby. I hear her voice:
In the hush between sets.
In the curl of light on the water.

In the salt wind at my back.

The ocean has never stopped speaking. And neither has she.

Resilience, Remembrance, and Lane 3

Today is my son's 17th birthday. I’m watching him swim deliberately, doggedly. He, as always, is swimming his heart out. We are at a swim meet in Greensboro, North Carolina. Greensboro Aquatic Center. Lane 3. The same pool he’s raced in countless times. The same town my mom once called home—briefly and begrudgingly—when she attended what was then the Woman’s College of UNC.

She was a Wilmington girl. A coastal soul just like me who missed the ocean every day she spent inland. Greensboro never really clicked for her, and I have to admit, I’ve inherited that discomfort. I used to think I hated this place. I still don’t love it. But it's complicated—because every time I come here, I remember things. I learn things.

My mom used to talk about how proud she was to go to the Woman’s College—at the time ranked just behind Vassar. She loved what it stood for: women pushing forward, making space for each other. But she was also fuming when the college went coed (years after she graduated). She was actually mad that they let men in—said it ruined the rankings. Probably true. That comment still makes me smile. My mother was many things—kind, resilient, loyal and loving beyond measure of her sons—and always honest, empathetic and optimistic. Qualities I have inherited and I hope that my son does too.

Now, decades later, I find myself back in this town more often than I ever imagined, sitting in bleachers at the Greensboro Aquatic Center, watching my son glide through the water. He’s a swimmer. A good one. And I’m so proud of him.

But this place holds shadows for me, too. There are memories tied to bad faith and bad people, memories I’d rather not revisit. The kind that come creeping in when you're trying to celebrate something pure—like your son’s birthday.

Still, somehow, when the heaviness creeps in, my mom shows up. Not literally, of course. But in spirit. Resilient. Loving. Maybe even amused. I think she keeps bringing me back here—to this strange in-between place—to remind me of something. That I can do hard things. That I can hold love and pain at the same time. That showing up for your child, again and again, is its own kind of healing.

She’s still teaching me. Even now.

And I know—know—she would have loved watching him swim. Just like I do. I can almost hear her cheering, sharp and proud. I think my grandparents, both strong athletes and even stronger minds, would’ve been proud too. They’d probably tell us both to get back to the coast, to saltwater and sea air, to where we belong.

But for now, we’re here. Lane 3. My son gliding through water like it’s home. And me—sitting, watching, remembering. Trying to soak up every moment.

Because resilience isn’t just about surviving. Sometimes, it’s about staying. Watching. Cheering. And showing up, even in places that feel heavy.

Happy birthday, Denali. You keep me moving forward.

(Rough Edit )First Southern Thunderstorm in a Long Time (Rough Words)

For over a year I think, in a variety of subconscious and conscious, ways I’ve been waiting for some fucking epiphany to appear (dictation said “help heal” proposed for epiphany) .Tonight, I finally think that happened. After leaving a toxic job, marital and familial devastation, plus a cross-country move I felt what seems so normal to me my whole life. A thunderstorm and a threat of a tornado that never comes... frogs and hopes of lightning bugs and everything North Carolina. Rooted in place. Everything in its right place.  

We sat on the porch as a family and I’m not sure my wife or my son was content or less anxious or happy… I’m pretty sure they were not. But in my bones something finally reconnected. They both went back to their computers or games and I realized that that’s my  strong connection between place and felt experience was what was happening. I have not had that in so long.  I remember a Hal Crowther essay decades ago in The Independent ....I don’t remember the title and I’m sure I misinterpreted it but he was right about hurricanes. Crowther was writing about hurricanes before moblie devices and ubiquitous Internet.  In sum, his premise was that when the power goes out, that techno reality is not there. 

Tonight  I felt that again.  I remember growing up with hurricanes and I look forward to them every year wherever I am on the planet. 

Coming out of the pandemic is likely to be synonymous with coming out of a hurricane. I wonder if some people will be still there. I wonder if some people made it through and/or if they are changed...  if waves will ever break the same if places will reopen if people will ever be the same. That’s this pandemic. The hurricane… A cosmic moral compass of complete insignificance. But beyond significance for those of us who live through it.

Leaving the Northwest, Never Easy, I Saw the Light Fading Out

 

 

I write this post in-flight back home to Portland, Oregon where forest fires have decimated nearly one million acres of Oregon forest in the past week.  The air quality in Portland is beyond hazardous to breath and the city is under a declared state of emergency.  On my flight, I am also wearing an N95 mask to help protect myself and others from the ongoing coronavirus outbreak.  The United States continues to reel from its reckoning with racial injustices and societal division.  Not being able to breath is both literal and metonym in these surreal times.

 

I am not really sure what I am flying back to.  My wife and son have evacuated the city due to the toxic air quality and Portland has been shut down for months on end due to COVID-19 and nightly protests.  It’s been hard to sort through the delirium of my existence in a place that was once a welcome refuge and beacon.  I feel trapped by nostalgia and memory of this place as it once was, yet crestfallen by what realities it holds for me and my family.  My sentimentality, emotional and energetic sensorium, has pushed me to the revelation that this is not a stage in my relationship to Portland but rather a transition away from it as it is now and move to a new space for myself and family.  This transition is a return to something historical, familiar, and nourishing; we are moving to a known place, but with intentions of reconsecration and re-engagement with activities and practices that we once eagerly left behind when we moved to Portland. 

 

It’s hard.  It’s hard to sort out what is, and what role is played by, memory, reflection, nostalgia, and aspiration.  All of these meanings are essential to the project of Derrida’s Archive Fever inquiry (hence my blog’s moniker).  These meanings are also real in an embodied sense that I have not conscientiously grappled with in a long time, if ever; these meanings are all sticky, and they mute, distort, amplify one’s desire and (in)action.  Everything in its right place, I suppose.  Finding a balance in my transition seems to be the project at hand.  I have no doubt it is time to leave, but do so holding gratitude and grief skyward as sails toward the horizon.

The Magic of Refraction

One of the aspects of living on the West Coast that I still can't get enough of is the sun setting over the Pacific.  I grew up in southeastern North Carolina, seeing sunrises over the Atlantic...possibly taking them for granted.  The sun's daily greeting and parting salutation are different, but equally magical, experiences.  Both can be preceded by (sunrise) or followed by (sunset) a green flash.  I've never seen one at sunset, and long for that...enough to make me chase sunsets ad infinitum.  Here's a photo from last week in Cannon Beach, Oregon.  It intimates so many points of happiness and connection.  We did not see a green flash, but it does feel like we go right in matters of the heart which is a supposed blessing of the green flash.

Draft: A Christmas Story of a Boy's First Wetsuit

FIRST DRAFT (30 minutes) My mom took this photo Winter 1984.  This was the first winter that I surfed and I'm holding my first surfboard, a Dick Brewer (shaped by Gary Linden).  The year before, had started surfing and was hooked.  I surfed every day, whether there were waves or not...I was in the ocean thanks to my mom, grandmother, and the parents of my surfing mates.  I had sat the previous winter out, due to not having a full suit.  As the fall turned into early winter, the water got colder and my Piping Hot 2 mm vest no longer kept me warm; I wanted/needed a full suit.  I couldn't sit another winter out.  

During the summer and fall of 1983 my parents were fighting, probably due to my dad's gambling and unwillingness to get a job, as that would interfere with his bar and poker time.  My dad hated that I was a surfer for a variety reasons, mostly due to his ego wobbling under the weight of his son not being devoted to a "real sport", though I did play football, baseball, and basketball.  My dad was an asshole.  My mom, brother, and myself went to live with my grandmother and ended up staying with Granny into the winter.  I remember my dad arguing with my mom about me surfing during the winter, even though she wasn't living with him.  He insisted, as he always did that I should not surf and would grow out of it.  He would even tell me that after high school I would have to give it up. 

My mom loved the ocean as much as I do and she fought him on this.  All I wanted for Christmas was this wetsuit.  That year the move "A Christmas Story" was released.  Somehow I parlayed Ralphie Parker's desire for a BB gun into my own soul journey for year long surfing.  The wetsuit, a 3/2 Rip Curl Insulator, was under the tree Christmas morning at Granny's.  This was my first session.  It was knee high.  But, I remember my mom sitting on the beach watching me with her camera to take photos and, I guess, make sure I didn't drown.  As I write this I remember her, and all the ways she and granny encouraged me to pursue my passion and fought to make it so I could, from trips to the beach during the winter to showing me courage to live my dreams.

Green Paths and Golden Rules

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."  -H. D. Thoreau

I spend a lot of my day on a school campus of some sort, be it grade school or university.  I've been doing so for my whole life basically, either as a student, teacher, or administrator.  For the past five years I have been spending time on school campuses as a parent, which is pretty cool when juxtaposed with my role as university professor/administrator.  Increasingly, one of the characteristics that I thrive on when I'm on any campus is its relationship to nature.  Here are just a few pics I snapped today. What I like about all of them is that they are the path I take to either teach or drop off a young scholar.  The peace, tranquility, and inspiration I derive from moving through these spaces, along these paths, is sheer sublimity.