Monday, July 11, 2005

meterology of man

I watched footage of a hurricane slam into the gulf this morning. Made me think of sybolism.
Human emotion is such, I said to myself. I watched the CNN coverage and felt like I was reading the biography of every human being on this globe.
....
First there is the panic. Screams and shouts and midnight mass to comfort the fears and anxiety.
Then the situation is evaluated. Then realizations are made. Preperations. Board up the doors and windows. "This one's gonna hurt". Waiting. Watching. Wishing and hoping it wouldn't be. Now panic, but still that icky feeling in the stomach. More waiting. The weatherman says soon, maybe tomorrow. Its always good when you can sleep on it.
Then it hits. Hard. Ugly. Bad. Roofs off buildings and fishing boats in playgrounds, that kind of shit. It hits. It hurts. Passes.
Then the tears. The loses counted. The dead. The wounded. The destruction. Rubble and ruin. Heartache. Anger. Fear. "Thanks God, you could have hit me in the head with a shovel and it would have been better than this", at least then you can kind of guess when the pain goes away. But this is constant. Anarchy and confusion.
And then...order.
Law enforcement, fire, medical, repair crews, TV, neighbors, family, friends, SEND IN THE MARINES!
The Storm moves on. The clouds thin.
There is sunlight in the darkest hour. It dosn't matter how long the hours toll till then. There will be reconstruction.
There are always storms. There is always reconstruction.
Maybe through the debris of your home and neighborhood you find your family and your friends and your dog and cat and your favorite shirt...all of which are OK. You took a beating. But the house can be rebuilt. Trees replanted.
I stood in the wasteland of my life; the rubble all around, smoldering, still burning, the smoke choking and blinding, my heart apart and scattered with the frailness of human emotion. And then she walks over a corpse, or a charred stump, or a smashed car or any number of broken dreams and through the smoke and I see her and for the first time in a long time I remeber that storms pass.