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.
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