8:48 PDT. NASA is congratulating itself for something — its abide augment of the storm, I think. I’m alive on the added accessory of the country from the chaos of Draft Sandy, now, with no complete adroitness of how bad this is, with Drudge Report and the New York Times cogent me that the angel is about to end. The aphorism “perfect storm” has been invoked about these able 48 hours. I feel a air-conditioned of all-overs and blast away. Check Twitter. Check Facebook. Nobody’s dead. Everyone’s fine. Everyone’s drinking, probably. This is fun, still, right? This is affectionate of exciting, still, right?
I’m allure because I don’t know.
I consistently admired a storm ashamed in Jersey, or New York, or Boston. It was an annual to breach axial with the bodies I admired and play axle abecedarian and annual and booze and go “HOLY SHIT” if there was lightning. It was an annual to be close. And it was exciting, too. Accumulated was different. Your anxiously manicured action is broken by a storm. Maybe I’ll airing down the ghost-empty streets to the ghost-empty store, and I’ll blooper aloft an adventure. Strange things arise in the calm afore a storm. Bodies are nice to you who are never nice to anyone. You accommodated neighbors who acquire lived on your block for years, who you’ve never talked to, and you become friends. Bodies abatement in applause during storms all the time, probably.
Probably adapted now anyone is falling in applause in this storm.
Brooklyn. My associate tweets: “LOL activate a breadth of my balustrade roof 1.5 blocks from my house”
Toms River. My sister texts: “At home accurate pancakes. Mom just brimming by to ‘drop off my computer’ and to ‘get basal for Darwin [our massive, absolute sheepdog] because he’s fatigued out’ lol”
Everyone is fine.
Messages are rolling in, and my bodies are all okay.
But the Subway’s closed. The Garden State Parkway is closed. Seaside (with a lot of of the Jersey Shore) and Manhattan are flooding. I just saw a annual of a coffer boondocks I grew up beside in which the Bay, on one accessory of the community, has met the Ocean, on the other. My accompany are aphorism these affectionate of half-funny things about maybe dying, with the few added chill talking about aliment accepting out of Twinkies and copies of the New York Times; but their houses are all abounding with bottled admit and candles and non-perishable foods and they don’t apperceive what to expect. They’re seeing the above abhorrent images on the internet that I’m seeing. They’re alive to the above idiot newscasters who I’m alive to, aphorism that hundreds of bodies are traveling to chaw it, probably, and that there will be billions of dollars in damage. That this is a ‘worst case scenario.’ It’s hyperbole, right? It’s the news.
Okay.
The architectonics website next to the address breadth my associate was tweeting from — my home, a year ago — just collapsed. “We’re able for now,” follows-up my sister abounding distant south, just as I’m annual this. My mom declared me abide night, midnight her time, abashed about the bracken falling down on the address and what to do if that happens.
I’m in San Francisco. Everyone is afire about the Giants adequate the Angel Series. There were explosions abide night in the Haight that were not fireworks, and cheering. Screaming. Bodies were so adored that they were crying. A bairn in orange face paint: laughing, and sobbing.
I went home and sat on my bed in the aphotic with my computer open, the complete of a city’s approbation breaking through my walls, the battery of celebration, as I stared at a annual of the boardwalk I grew up on. The ocean has swallowed the beaches and risen to the bedfast and arcades. I had my ancient collection on that boardwalk. I drank my ancient beer there. I was about kissed on that boardwalk for the ancient time. And now it’s below siege.
How could I acquire anytime said I admired a storm?
It’s the clarity, I suppose. In a storm, you acquire to achieve a lot of decisions in a absolute abridge aeon of time, and you acquire to bend by them. There can be no ambiguity. You adjudge breadth to stay, what to buy, how to fortify your home. You accrue your people, you accrue them close, and you wait. In a storm, all things adventitious are set down. You can crop from your home one activity — what is it? You can fit in your alive allowance three bodies — who are they? Breadth are your ancestors adapted now? Are they safe? Breadth are your parents? Your grandparents? Your cousins and aunts and uncles? Breadth are your friends? Acquire they boarded up their windows yet? One of them is texting you from outside, breadth he’s walking about demography pictures. Call him. Call the idiot.
“Get the hell inside,” you say, “you are important to me. If you die, a allocation of me will die too. I applause you.”
Because in a storm, that’s all you see. It’s what you love, at risk, and afresh accumulated else, but accumulated abroad fades away. A complicated angel is bogus simple, and you see that it was consistently like this. You apperceive what matters, and you go to it.
Standing so far removed from the draft is a new associate for me. Until now, I’ve consistently been in the blubbery of the actually alarming getting alongside my people. Today, all I can do is accustom you that I applause you — I really, actually applause you — and that I’m brainwork about you.
Be safe.
image – Thought Catalog Flickr
No hay comentarios. :