Hurricane Lockdown

Hurricane lockdown. One roommate is in Greece (hi Joe!). The other roommate (hi Dave!) is housesitting and won't be around either. This means that (hi Elisia!) will be braving the storm with a bottle of wine, a thousand piece puzzle, two cats, and possibly the lead singer of Dave's band (Scott I'm not going to pretend you read this blog. But I'll tell you in person I mentioned you.)

People in grocery stores are losing it (I wanted to say "going ape-shit"--keeping it clean for you Mom!) All the D batteries are sold out. Flashlights flood the aisles of hardware stores. I lugged a big box of 20 water bottles onto the subway today. The subways are shutting down, for the first time in New York City's history. I was surprised to find out they don't have large, metal, guillotine style doors that will slide down and block the entrance. I wanted to hear the swish-bang of steel doors all across the city. It would feel really epic and I would stand on my rooftop feeling like Batman at Helm's Deep (this is, after all, my blog. I can say whatever I want).

As it happens I have the bulk of my novel completed. Or, at least, I've finished all that I wish to workshop this semester. Woo hoo! So this means that I'm going to start doing a ton of re-writing in the mean time.*

Now my brain is free to think creatively in other directions. I have this great story about three roommates, in different places, when a hurricane comes...just kidding. I wonder how many people will include a hurricane in their first short story/novel excerpt ever workshopped in graduate school. I wonder if they'll substitute "tornado" or something else so it's not as obvious. I wonder if I'm the only one that corny.

I would love to be one of two extremes during the hurricane. The first option is to be frantically busy. Maybe gathering all my magazines, tearing out random pictures, then throwing said pages up in the air for hours once the storm hits. Once we're in the eye of the storm, I'll sit on the floor in the middle of the magazines and meditate. Once the storm starts up again I'll start taping the pages onto the wall in a mural of the universal truth I discovered while centering myself. The piece will be called: _______ (to be fulfilled).

The other option is to meditate throughout the entire process. Let the storm pass through me and achieve some grand ultimate catharsis.

Neither of these options will happen. I'll watch tv until the electricity goes out, maybe play some Beethoven during the most intense parts of the storm (on our grand piano bwa ha ha), and drink wine while doing a thousand piece M.C. Escher puzzle.

But as I was saying before, people are going crazy. A woman nearly ran me down while I was in the cross walk this afternoon. She was evacuating the city! No time to stop for the less fortunate mortals on foot! Another woman talked to me quite openly in the CVS line about the thrills and woes about being carded when you're clearly of age and your health is failing. Did she know I'm only 24?

Apparently the third best selling items, behind water bottles and flashlights, are water proof cameras. For the lightning, I suppose. Otherwise people will have 24 pictures of gray rain. "Here's the storm at oh-three hundred hours," they'll tell their grandkids, although they were never in the military. "Here it is at sixteen hundred." The kids will peer closely at the fuzzy gray snapshots, curious as to when they will be old enough gain the wisdom that their grandparents have, the wisdom that discerns something meaningful in the fuzzy photographs.

Everything, in hurricane weather, can be said ominously. My definition of ominously is: a) any statement which is impossible to either support or refute. b) anything said in a whisper.

Ex: "There's an electricity in the air."
"The animals are acting strange."
"I feel the tingle...do you feel it? Oh Marianne."

Listening to Leonard Cohen.

Overall, storms are exciting. I hope everyone is safe. I hope everyone had time to prepare. I think the hype in the media (for New York, at least), is perhaps a tad overblown, but that's an okay thing. If that's what it takes for people to pay attention, then play on, ye soft pipes, play on.

Can you imagine if the telecaster's 'news at nine' voice was her everyday speaking voice?

(at home with her husband): Tonight the McCarren residence will have chicken for dinner.
"Marjorie, you don't have to talk like that. This is not being broadcast to any audience."
"On the freeway home from work this afternoon, a car dramatically cut another car off. The passengers are safe, although officials recommend staying tuned for updates."
"Marjorie for Christ's sake put the round wire brush back in the bathroom drawer. You have real microphones at work."

A long time ago I started a short story about a weather man named Don who is going crazy. I'll cut and paste the beginning for you here:

The sky was hot, too hot, and as Mac O’Donnell brushed his teeth in front of the mirror, he wondered how badly his toupee would be seared today. By noon, the heat would bristle and scorch like a toothbrush against the tongue—the plastic fingers scrubbing against a filmy, pasty sky. Milky residue over a pink stratosphere.
O’Donnell switched toothbrush from hand to hand, admired his profile from first the left, then the right side. From the left, the twitch in his cheek remained invisible. If he swayed right, he exposed the burn from last week’s accident. O’Donnell knew its relative insignificance. O’Donnell knew this burn, and every other injury on the planet, was the scratch of an impending gash.
As he transitioned from toothbrush to razor, he unconsciously sucked in his gut. He had lost weight again—the innermost corners of his rib cage stuck out like door handles. Don’t open me. Stay away. He had made the mistake of muttering these words in front of Sally, News at Nine’s secretary. “What?” she had asked, her ponytail’s shape mimicking the question. “What?” O’Donnell mimicked her now. He wished she had more substance to her than one word. That she had answers behind that question mark.
“Nothing,” he had answered, and turned back to the water cooler, dampening his leathery tongue. What a lost cause. Nothing, nothing could satiate his worries now, his constant anxiety that trickled through the crevices of his mind. What about when the rain began to sear off people’s skin? When the lightning started spelling out answers in the sky? When that fucking comet blasted through the atmosphere? And he wasn’t around to tell people, watch the fuck out? What? What then?
O’Donnell finished up his grooming routine and walked through his vaulted ceiling, skylight filled apartment. The walls shot up at a staggering 20 feet height. Ridiculous? His ex-girlfriend had suggested to him, and ridiculous? He had leered back. What’s ridiculous? That I’m the most successful weatherman in the tri-state area? That this has earned me a future? That I predict the future? What’s fucking ridiculous about that? (This was two weeks before she left him for a gamer who spent his days underground, just of age, pizza skin and thriving greasy hair. Irony, said O'Donnell bitterly to himself, knows no limits.)
Now, O’Donnell luxuriated in the freedom of disconnection. Like an outdated jagged graph, his routine lacked consistency. After all, as a weatherman, his job only required him to be conscious and loquacious for 2 hours a day, from 8 to 10. After a few jokes, pinches, and howdy do’s, he could free wheel his way through the other 22. O’Donnell became used to sleeping till 3 AM, then going golfing in the dark; making origami out of take out napkins; watching re-runs of Matlock while slouched on the sofa, eating bags of potato chips, shirt unbuttoned so the crumbs didn’t stain his work t-shirts, only tangled in his chest hair—there had been a time when his work cautioned him against gaining weight. And there had been a time when Mac had cared. But now, with the very walls yelling at him you are not safe! And when he found himself whimpering in the sheets at 5 AM, terrorized by the suggestions of a cockroach, hiding in the bathtub because all cotton smelled of sulfur—
Now Mac did not care about his appearance, though not too long ago women would approach him in the grocery store, asking for an autograph. He had been the hot weatherman, and relished in the savory pun. But now, his recent fear had pulled out all his hair, cinched his belt in two notches, and slackened his jowls. He paused in front of the key bowl, catching his reflection in the entryway mirror. “Stealth. Control. Fire.” He whispered to himself. Recipe for success. “Stealth. Control. Fire.” And opened the front door.
Outside, O’Donnell braced himself for the heat that would hit him like a frying pan. He reeled, until he saw the neighborhood girl riding her tricycle, ponytail bobbing and sweater clasping around her ankles. Her cheeks rosy with the cold.Whatever catastrophic change O'Donnell read in his graphs before work, clearly would not happen today.
Stepping into his silver sedan, O'Donnell backed out of the driveway with radical precision. It was O'Donnell's ability to always be right, 100% right, about things that nobody else cared about, that had landed him the job as weatherman at channel 5's station. In the same way that he now drove down the freeway with exactly 1.5 feet on each side between the next lane and his car, O'Donnell knew what cloud patterns would dictate what side of the veranda to sit on for the month of June; knew what parks would receive the most rain, thereby driving nannies and mothers to the best parks for puddle splashing; knew the layout of the city so meticulously that a gentleman, should he wish to impress his date, or a lady, for that matter, wished to be unimpressed, would always know to read O'Donnell's weather report before departing, for O'Donnell would know if Portofinos, Bella Vista's number one first date spot, would actually be drafty that night or not.
Yes, in a sense O'Donnell was Bella Vista's most prized possession. His unnatural dedication to weather patterns, coupled with his scrupulous knowledge of the town's layout, made him a sort of legendary clairvoyant in the tales of Bella Vista's housewives, who gossiped about him while swirling their Long Islands clasped by orange nail polished hands. There was even, at one point, talk of creating a billboard with O'Donnell's face superimposed upon a blue sky, next to his motto: “Weather for Every Pleasure” (O'Donnell lost the spot to an anti-tornado campaign).
All devolved, thought O'Donnell as he swung his sedan into the studios' 3rd best parking spot. All decayed. He strode into the studio, wiping the corners of his mouth of the sweat-paste that was nowadays in constant formation.
“O'Donnell, you're late,” Larry the sound technician half whispered, half hissed at him. No matter.
O'Donnell walked over to his platform, green screen spread out behind him, and began that day’s weather report. “Winds in from due East,” he muttered, hardly paying attention to what he was saying, “We expect this to collapse the major bridges and send automobiles careening into the water, paper airplanes lacking a propeller, warning all swimmers to tread the fuck away from two ton projectiles—“ Mac became vaguely conscious of a frozen feeling in the room, like the ice chest before you shut the lid—“this is not to say that you should avoid exercise, or that all hope is lost. It’s only February, people. Those New Years' resolutions are near enough in the recent past to bite you in the ass if you don’t lose it, har har. Rather, we recommend heading towards the coast, away from the winds, and--
O'Donnell was cut short by a foreign whirring sound. Looking around, he realized that the green screen behind him had gone black, the camera's red lights disappeared, and all 48 of News at Nine's employees staring blankly at him.


*"Mean time" is a very funny phrase. Taken out of context? In context? "Time is mean."" 'mean' in the stingy sense. Time is mean in the cruel sense. Mean in the 'average of' sense. In the meaningful sense. Is it okay with everyone if I use single quotes? I really dislike double quotation marks. They're thick. Just my feelings on the matter.