Last hurricane post, for a while at least, I hope

[katallison]

You know, I have in my time done bitching aplenty about Minnesota weather. I have griped about the brutal cold, the sweltering heat, the shortness of autumn, the slushy sog of spring, the two-foot snowfalls, the humidity. And while I don't really retract any of that rancor, I am moved to reflect that there's a lot to be said for taking your meteorological pain in small daily doses, instead of in one gigantic sledgehammering knockout.

Also, I was thinking today about the fact that so many otherwise kindly, compassionate, gentle souls that I know are avid fans of destructively violent weather. There have been a couple of posts lately in which people seem clearly to be trying to deal with the subsequent cognitive dissonance--their fascination with such phenomena, their realization of the actual damage it does to actual human lives--and to sort through the odd uneasy guilt about it all. I know I'm not the only one who, in the midst of all the fear and anxiety, felt a shameful thrilled undercurrent of Wow, this is fucking incredible! Wooo-hooo!

There's no real shame, I think, in acknowledging the human fascination with the shadow--or our need for it, even. Kali dances in the dark corners of all our brains, and I'm a big believer that You don't get light without shadow. Perhaps the thing that's so oddly relieving, or exhilarating, even, about natural disasters--especially for those of us who recoil from human violence and like to believe our species is capable of better--is that it gives us our necessary balancing ration of violence, destruction, in a form that's totally inhuman, or ahuman might be more accurate. It has no reference to us. It's impersonal, indifferent, equally free of human causation or human preventability.

Maybe it's just a B&D analogue; we humans tend to be control freaks, and there's release and exhilaration in being put in a situation where it is out of our control, where something else is clearly and totally in charge. Or maybe it's just really late and I'm really tired and no longer making any sense.

(And on a wholly different note, lunaris_ is clearly on to something about Anderson Cooper's need to put himself in the path of airborne signage. Dude's got his own shadow, and it is aluminum and jaggedy-edged...)

Comments

[twistedchick]

I've always liked thunder-and-lightning storms. Maybe it's because I used to live on a hill where I could watch the lightning crackle over the woods and fields behind; maybe it's because I was born in one. Not so fond of tornados and hurricanes -- but I will say that (as a journalist) they can be fun *because everyone wants to talk about them.* A big storm is one of the few occasions when people will want to talk to newspapers and other media about what happened to them, so everyone will know what happened to them. (Which does not mean that I want to live through another Night of 30 Tornados just to have something to write about...)

Big storms are above personality and morality; they just happen. They don't need to be assigned "goodness" or "evil". In D&D terms, they're true neutral.

But today I sat and watched what was coming, and prayed, and spun wool, and got fuck-all done in terms of the writing that I'd planned to do all day today. And now I'm waiting to see what the rain will be like when it gets up here.

[debg.livejournal.com]

I think, at its simplest, what we have is the unvoiced desire to be knocked off our pedestals as the Ultimate Creation or Image of God or whatever the metaphor of choice may be. On some level, I like to think we're evolved enough as a species to know how puny we are, and actually welcome the salutory reminder of same.

I live in an area famous - and always at risk - from that knockout sledgehammer blow from nature; San Francisco tops the lists when "city at risk" is mentioned. But no matter what, huge showy force of nature disaster or small grinding doses of power - think Buffalo in 1994, with their 53 consecutive days of snow, and fifty-plus people dying of winter-related causes - we're all very small. And sometimes I think even the most fanatic really don't want to have to live up to the self-imposed pressure or being "made in God's image."

[j-bluestocking.livejournal.com]

There is something riveting about such a giant, intense act of nature, particularly when it comes into contact with civilization.

As of tonight, though, we're past the awesome-power-of-our-world stage and into the simple, grim, human endurance stage, unleavened by shock. I smiled for a moment when I was watching CNN and saw a man on a sidewalk carrying a trayful of newly baked, complicated-looking cream pastries that he explained he was taking to a bunch of stranded tourists in a hotel. Bars had already re-opened, and I thought, good on New Orleans! Then I read that as of the early hours of this morning there'd been a two-block breach in a levee, and the waters of Lake Ponchartrain were pouring into the city, as had been feared.

I'll bet those people in the SuperDome would like to get the hell out of there. Not to mention those people with, say, broken legs, still waiting for medical help. And the amount of destruction in Mississippi is more than I can wrap my mind around right now.

The spectacle has gone, and now there's only suffering and a lot of work.

[j-bluestocking.livejournal.com]

Christ. I just saw a woman on CNN talking to a man who was stumbling along, in shock, his hands on two children. He told the reporter his house broke in half. The reporter asked where his wife was. "She's gone," he said. "She's gone... I couldn't hold onto her. She said, 'You can't hold me. Take care of the children and the grandchildren.'" The reporter's voice started to tremble, and she asked the man to tell them his wife's name, in case anyone out there found her. Then she asked where the man was going. He said, "I don't know. I'm lost. That was everything I had. I'm lost." He moved back and forth as he talked, turning his head, as though he could go in any direction or none, as though he had absolutely no impetus to life. The reporter started to break down.

It's four in the morning and I didn't have anyone to tell this to, so I put it here.

More katrina

[(Anonymous)]

I saw that interview too. It was dreadful. But for real, for once, not some cow in a 2005 SUV wailing about the gas prices.

Regarding the a-personality of nonhuman disaster, I too find it appealing in its nonhumanness, but I have a disquieting coda. If you've ever run into Bill McKibben's book *The End of Nature*, you'll have encountered the thesis that global climate change means that the weather is no longer just "the weather", that nonhuman thing from which everyone suffers and beneath which everyone is equal. He calls it "the end of nature" because he feels that climate was the last thing we hadn't affected, the last thing that was really "nature" and not "human" (if you buy that dichotomy), but that now we have. And, of course, a textbook symptom of global warming is more precipitation falling in violent weather events, more violent weather events overall, more tornadoes, more blizzards, more hurricanes, worse hurricanes. National news never points this out, for reasons which are probably obvious--always El Nino, always "worst hurricane season on record", never global climate change--but it's what the projection looks like, and, so far, what anecdotal evidence bears out.

So I'd like Katrina better if I could be sure we hadn't ourselves created or strengthened her. If I could be sure the man in the interview hadn't had his wife ripped out of his hands because of the neighbor's SUV, or my AC, or my institution's emissions. And I can't.

--Cat (different one. Lurker. Still liking the 'blog. Thanks for all of it.)

[devohoneybee.livejournal.com]

Kat,
Just wanted to drop in and say thank you for your Katrina posts. Clear, good information, thoughtfully framed. The net is a wonderful thing.

[lapillus]

Do you know where you found the video you were watching when I came in?