Aftermath of Irma

..
 
Prologue:
These Tortured Hours
 
“Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction, but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn’t something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn’t get in, and walk through it, step by step. There’s no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverized bones. That’s the kind of sandstorm you need to imagine.” Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore    
 
Midnight. Power flickers a few times, then goes out for the count. A bolt of lightning does the transformer in.
 
Darkness surrounds, permeates the house. Without, torrential sheets of rain fall like whips. The wind growls, snarls, pounds the walls with brutish paws. It whinnies and whines. I feel them buckling beneath horrendous hooves. Giant jaws, battering, gripping and pulling them apart. I feel no fear, just exhilaration.
 
Just a thin sheet of metal between me and the primal forces of nature, having thrown off its role as nurturer, for these tortured hours. The storm is relentless, well into the darkness before dawn. Eventually, sleep takes me.
 
Awake to the swelter of heat, just after noon.  
 
Walk around the house, no damage, except some minor tears in the porch screens, a loose rain gutter, which I refasten. Some debris of fallen leaves in the yard. I unbolt the board from my bedroom window, so I can get some air. Tree limbs lie about, cast off by the akratic tread of titanic limbs across land, sea and sky.  
 
Read a novel by Agatha Christie through the afternoon, Sleeping Murder. Wasn’t fond of it, also guessed the killer wrong. The celebrated dame mislead me perfectly with a handful of red herrings and slid the true culprit in under my nose. Misdirection achieved.
 
Sit on the porch a few hours, to stay cool. Finish it just before dusk.
 
Mom argued with the neighbors before the storm, about large planting pots they left in their yard. Screams at them to shut their dog up, this night. I cringe. We have to live here. Neighbors should be seen and not disturbed.
 
Night falls. Mom has to run her flashlight constantly. She frets in darkness. Mom’s friend Lee sends her husband Frank with some hot rice and beef stew for us. We eat by flashlight.  
 
Mom panics, says she can’t live without air conditioning. She lays down on the living room floor, by the open front door. I make her a pot of ice water and get her a cloth. Bring her a gallon of water to drink. She lays there. We talk, some, about moving back to New York to be with our family. Our usual pipe dream, when crises arise.
 
New York is the past. This subtropical bog, the present, nothing but death assured, for the future.
 
Bored, sweating, lonely. My attitude is bleak.
 
Mom finds and lights a candle. Its orange corona flickers silently across the living room.
 
~
Huddled in this tomb
Where sunlight finds no purchase
Wind has found my skin
~
 
I come back into my bedroom. Swallowed by darkness and solitude, I stare at the glow stars on my ceiling and play music in my head.
 
Step outside, just before midnight. Darkness, silence, in the brutal wake. Heavenly lights of the firmament, overhead. They pulse, stretch amorphous fingers, contract again.
 
The streets are bereft. I couldn’t remember the last time I had seen so many stars.
 
And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.
 
..
 
Chapter 1:
The Pitch Darkness
 
“Time expands and contracts, all in tune with the stirrings of the heart.” Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore
 
Woke midmorning. The face of the weather god, like Janus, has flipped from a furious grimace to a beatific smile. It is relatively cool, with a nice breeze.
 
I eat some sausages and bacon for breakfast. Everything in the fridge will have to be discarded, after tonight.
 
Lots of detritus on the car. A displaced bird’s nest lays across the center of the windshield. Car air conditioner is weak, but greatly welcomed.
 
Drive to the library. Several business signs are wrecked. A huge tree has fallen across the entrance to the parking lot. Workmen in orange vests busy themselves with its removal.
 
Despite a window sign saying it would reopen today, it remains closed.  I walk away, crestfallen. Stuck with whatever garbage there is in the house to read.
 
Electric company phone lines are constantly busy. No telling when power will be restored.
 
Drive to Publix. Their Wi-Fi network is down. Wanted to tell friends we are okay, but no luck. Got a hot cup of coffee, as pale consolation.
 
At a malfunctioning stoplight nearby, a gas truck nearly collides with a car, right in front of me.  Brakes squeal, massive horn blares.
 
Return home. Mom goes to my stepbrother Jamie’s house. They already have power restored.
 
My bedroom has always been the warmest room in the house. No tree cover. Like a bug under magnifying glass, I swelter in here, or sit uncomfortably in a plastic lawn chair on my porch.
 
Hour after hour, these are my choices: lay in my bed and sweat, sit in the living room arm chair and sweat a little less, sit on the porch, with the breeze.
 
I play music in my head. I recite poems aloud. Tennyson, Neruda. It’s quiet. I am alone.
 
I read a book called Making Our Way, collection of letters and journal entries by poor and oppressed peoples flooding to the promise of a new life in America, around the turn of the century. It gives me perspective on how good we have it now, even under these conditions.
 
I see many parallels with contemporary society. Those on top stay there by keeping their heel on everyone else’s neck, taking everything. Those below them toil and suffer in deprivation.
 
Hours pass. I suffer in sweat and isolation.  
 
~
Talons scratch the hours
Bruised scales contract and harden  
Nostrils pouring smoke  
~
 
My erstwhile stepbrother Jamie shows up. Face so like his father, with that same disdain etched naturally into the set of his eyes and mouth.
 
He tells me that my mother is spending the night at his house. He is here to pick up some food items she requested.
 
He offers me use of his generator. I hesitate. Am unfamiliar with them, I know they run on gasoline, which is expensive. I accept, however.  
 
We go to his house. It’s been so long, he has entirely unfamiliar dogs now. The previous two having passed and two new additions to his family. A black curly haired dog named Murphy greets me, a smaller tannish haired dog named Mailey growls and yaps incessantly at my unknown intrusion. The children ignore me, as usual.
 
The generator is heavy, few hundred pounds, easy. He gives me one brief tutorial over its operation and leaves. Just like his father.
 
I run chords to my refrigerator, its contents very near to spoil, another line to my bedroom with a 3 way splitter at the end. Wi-Fi not functioning. I plug in my air conditioner, television and cable box. A small window of regularity reopens. I watch television in the cool bedroom for 5 hours. Eat a little something.
 
At midnight, I cut the generator off. It is so loud, do not wish to disturb the neighbors into the early morning. I think the house smells of gas anyhow and I worry about carbon monoxide. I had set it up on my front porch, which is open air with screens, but have to leave the front door slightly ajar for its thick power cord to enter the house.  
 
I quail a moment to reenter the pitch darkness and uncomfortable evening heat of late summer, but I worry more that someone will come onto my porch and steal the generator. The only protection is a locked thin metal door with screen busted out. Only need to reach through and unlock it. I doubt I would hear it opening in my sleep. It’s a very expensive gamble for those 5 blissful hours of air conditioning and television, but I am committed to it, now.
 
Back in my bedroom, again. Enjoying that last bit of cool air as it fades.
 
I look forward to all that I took for granted. A cool room to rest in. A warm meal. A hot shower. Something to watch, someone to talk to, via the internet.
 
My stepbrother’s stepson comes by, Connor, at 2am. He worked 12 hours at landscaping, just came from a bar and has to be up in 4 hours. He takes the generator. Mom asked him. Pulled a few muscles, but rest more easily, lack of air conditioning aside.  
 
And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.
 
..
 
Chapter 2:
The Eternal Logos
 
“And you really will have to make it through that violent, metaphysical symbolic storm. No matter how metaphysical or symbolic it might be, make no mistake about it: it will cut through flesh like a thousand razor blades. People will bleed there, and you will bleed too. Hot, red blood. You’ll catch that blood in your hands, your own blood and the blood of others.”   Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore  
 
Woke in a swelter, for the third time. No idea when power will be restored. Nothing to do except read whatever books lay around the house. No one to talk to. I lay on the couch, sweating and despairing. I decide I need to go on an adventure.
 
Take a cold shower, look in the bathroom mirror. Eyes look back. Strange eyes, for I seldom ever look at myself. Brown, small, but deep. There is penetrating gentleness and a twinkle of genius/madness. I empty my pockets onto the counter.  
 
The contents of my pockets were as follows.  
 
Right pocket,
 
Wallet, containing driver’s license, social security card, various other cards. Three one hundred dollar bills, a twenty, a few singles and a bit of loose change. Torn half of a dollar bill. David had the other half.  
 
Smartphone, scratched up on the back, desktop is a picture of a fire elemental.
 
Left pocket,
 
Folding knife, scene depicting a fish being hauled from water on a line, along its side. Water froths mightily along its glistening tail, which ends in a sharp, bifurcated fin. Sun shines on the disturbed waters. Fisherman in beige jacket and brimmed hat, face turned toward the catch.    
 
Key ring, miniature discount cards to Walgreens, CVS and a penny with a cross cut into it, upon the ring, along with a wad of keys to doorknobs, deadbolts, and padlocks.    
 
I pocket my wallet and keys, put on sunglasses, grab my swim trunks and flip flops, throw a towel over my shoulder and head out.
 
Soon as I step onto the avenue, there, at my feet, is an unopened package of peanut butter and cream crackers. I laugh with surprising energy and mirth.
 
I pocket the crackers and walk to stepbrother’s house, where mom has our car, about two miles north. Have to walk around some debris on the sidewalk from the storm, at odd intervals.  
 
Arrive at Jamie’s house. Mom, the children Bailey and Graedin are there. My mother exclaims, “You walked here!?” Which the two children echo. This is the first that the 5 year old Graedin has ever spoken to me. I look at him and say, “Yeah I walked, better than you, my legs are twice as long,” with my signature smile and wink.  
 
I drive downtown, go to City Island library, hoping to borrow a couple books and go online, tell friends I am alright, but instead of down trees, it is closed from flooding. No luck.  
 
I cross the river Halifax, its waters deep blue and choppy from the breeze. I drive onto A1A, which runs along the beach, find a beach ramp and park.
 
Strip beside the car, get into my swim trunks, and put my clothes and accoutrement under the towel, on the driver’s seat. I search around several minutes for somewhere to hide my keys, but find nothing suitable, so I keep the key ring on my finger, my left hand firmly closed around it.
 
Walk down the beach, into the aquamarine waters of the Atlantic.  It is warm in late summer and thoroughly pleasant. I wade in about waist deep. I laugh as the breaks begin to strike me. Stay there a while, getting a feel for the water, it’s been a while.
 
I venture deeper, breaks rush at me like white stallions, mouths frothing wildly and a dust storm beneath their hooves. I dive under some, take some on the chin, as it were.
 
I float, retreat and stand, swim, lose my footing once or twice. Not many around. A couple of hours pass with the rush of waters and wind filling my senses.
 
~
Sky with arms throw wide
Ocean that holds all secrets
Skin bronzed by the sun
~
 
I walk up to the landing, wash off the salt in a beach shower, and bring my clothes into the public restroom this time. Dry off thoroughly and change into my pants and shirt.
 
I stroll about two miles south to the Ocean Walk, a complex of restaurants and a theatre. I sit on a stone bench in the shadow of the Hilton. A young man with platinum blonde hair, red faced from much sun, sits on another, in the sunlight. He has a travelers pack at his feet.  
 
I climb three flights of stairs to the movie theatre. The electronic marquee is down, the concession stand operator, also selling tickets, hands me a print out of movies. It by Stephen King has begun 10 minutes ago. I walk in just in time for the final preview to conclude. I thought it was pretty good.  
 
I exit just as dusk is falling over the ocean. I watch the sky redden and darken. I spot a pizzeria touting a dollar a slice on my walk back to the car. I eat a slice. Good pizza, I grab another, eat as I walk down the avenue.
 
I drive to The Oyster Pub and grab a draft beer. Head out pretty quickly. Go back to my stepbrother’s house. I charge my smartphone. We shoot the shit about old friends and old times. He goes to bed.
 
His yappy dog snuggles up to me for a while, then I discover he has a cat named Braxton. I pet his head, his neck, he rolls over happily for a tummy rub and gives me that demure half lidded look that only a cat can give you.
 
I enjoy the air conditioning til about 10pm and then return home to consuming darkness and oppressive heat.  
 
Seems the hottest night yet, perhaps just my sunburn. Pray for a breeze, but the air is humid and stagnant as a sarcophagus.
 
Cannot fall asleep for long hours, well into the dark of morning. Alone with my thoughts, with the eternal logos burning within.
 
And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.
 
..
 
Chapter 3:
The Hollow Rooms
 
“Only people who’ve been discriminated against can really know how much it hurts. Each person feels the pain in his own way, each has his own scars. So I think I’m as concerned about fairness and justice as anybody. But what disgusts me more are people who have no imagination. The kind T.S. Eliot calls hollow men. People who fill up that lack of imagination with heartless bits of straw, not even aware of what they’re doing. Callous people who throw a lot of empty words at you.” Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore
 
Woken just after 10am by a knock on the window. Jamie’s grown stepdaughter, her boyfriend and Jamie’s two small children are headed to a movie. They swing by to check on me.
 
I pack up our valuables, mom’s silver set, my laptop and head over to my stepbrother’s house.
 
I sit with mom a short time before she retreats to my stepbrother’s bedroom to sleep. I am tired from the little sleep I have managed in this unadulterated humidity.
 
The cat Braxton comes and walks up my lap and chest, kneading me a while before sitting down astride my chest and shoulder. He purrs as I stroke and feel around his coat, finding his favorite places. The usual suspects: ears, throat, belly.
 
Mailey the dog comes and lays down with her head in my lap. Murphy the other dog turns in circles and lays between my legs, head astride my foot. They say animals are drawn to and comfortable with decent people. It feels nice to be deemed such by these, whom until yesterday, were complete strangers.
 
After a time, I go into the boy’s bedroom and lie down. I find, of all things, a copy of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations. I read the expansive introduction, then nap a couple hours. The children return and fill the house with their gallivanting. I read.
 
~
Within this refuge
Minutes pour and stretch to hours
Windows filter light
~
 
In the late afternoon, I return home. I dump all the refrigerator food into a black trash bag and put it in the trash bin, by the roadside.
 
I bathe, now having grown accustomed to these cold showers, I hardly balk. I shave by flashlight and head out.  
 
I think about the homeless. My four days of roughing it, as it were, is their everyday, except they have no showers, no car to drive around town, no money for movies, pizza and beer. No family friends with which to shelter.
 
I gather items from the house, load up my trunk. I sit in the driver seat a while, unmoving, unblinking.
 
I turn the eye inside to the core of my being. I walk through the past, through the hollow rooms, abandoned by love and by light. Once solid, now less dense than air, only a fraction more than void. The weight of memory resting upon the antlers of my great heart.  
 
A tired animal, rests in the hollow of a yew tree. That arboreal womb, shedding leaves like tears, to form a shroud. Its chest rises, sinks and rises not again.
 
Departed friends stand together, across a sea of linear time, upon a distant and indistinct shore. Hands wave, mouths work soundlessly, eyes speaking.
 
Down I go, below memory, beneath primal instinct, beneath all sentiment and sentience and there, I find
 
The great singularity
 
Pulsing
 
Breathing
 
And it’s core
 
Fire
 
The endless wheel of fire
 
Staring back at me
 
There is a hollowed out thicket not far from my house where several homeless have set up tents, a rough room with a ceiling of leaves and sky. I have written about it before.
 
I prepare two boxes for them, park at the Family Dollar nearby and carry them, one under each arm.  
 
The contents of the boxes are as follows:
 
Left box,
 
Three gallons of purified drinking water I purchased for the storm.
 
Right box,
 
Canned food, can opener, soap, hand sanitizer, Band-Aid’s, gauze, tooth brushes, toothpaste, aspirin, insect repellent and half a dozen novels.
 
The two boxes are heavy, so I stop halfway, put down one and continue down the avenue.
 
I spot the orange circles of light in the darkness of the thicket that denote cigarette smoke. I set down the left box, go back for the right.
 
A very thin woman riding a bicycle down the sidewalk is stabbed in the leg by a protruding branch. She falls, curses. I help her up and right her bicycle. She curses angrily and asks me rhetorically if I think she has broken her leg, then says, “I guess if I had broken it, I wouldn’t be able to stand on it, right?” I smile and say yes. I tell her if it swells up, put ice on it. She thanks me and departs.
 
I retrieve the second box and return to the thicket. The first is already gone. A cigarette continues to flare its orange cyclopean eye. I set down the second box, turn and begin to walk away.
 
There is a rustle of leaves. I stop, turn and there is a man standing there. Shirt off and tied around his waist. He is reddened from much sunlight, his skin is taught at the shoulders, stretched across bone like canvas. He has long hair which falls in greasy, unwashed strands around his neck.
 
“Hey, thanks brother,” he says. He flashes a grin and holds out his hand. I walk up, take it. His grip is strong. I return it in measure.
 
“I’m Redding,” he says.  “My friends call me Red.”
 
“It’s good to meet you, Redding. I’m Daniel.”
 
“Call me Red, brother.”
 
I smile.
 
Buy a microwave pizza at the Family Dollar. Head back to my stepbrother’s house. We eat, shoot the shit a while. Everyone goes to bed.
 
I sit with Braxton, then kick on the laptop to make my daily addition to this chronicle. The small and insignificant events of a small and insignificant life.
 
I read some more of Meditations, then sleep finds me. Things get lively around here, early in the morning.
 
And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.  
 
Chapter 4:
Our Feeble Hands
 
“In everybody’s life there’s a point of no return. And in very few cases, a point where you can’t go forward anymore. And when we reach that point, all we can do is quietly accept the fact. That’s how we survive.” Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore  

Woken by the children about 8am. I talk with mom and the kids a while, then retire to the bedroom to read and relax til after 1pm.
 
Head to Taco Bell for lunch, then to the library, which has reopened, but the computer systems are still down.
 
A family comes in, charging devices at the library. I feel compassion for them. Even my mother and I, poor and solitary, had one place that offered safe harbor.
 
I pick up Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami and I read until close at 5pm.
 
~
Lights stands on the earth
Darkness upon its shoulders
River waters churn
~
 
Return to Jamie’s house. Read a while. Mom’s friend Lee has sent us dinner. An enormous tray of delicious yellow rice and chicken. Everyone has some. Glad to share.
 
How much and how little. How much of who and what we are is owed to others. To their contributions to our well being. To their walking out on us, leaving us to stand, or fall, on our own. To reconcile that there is no closure in the story of life. A hazy recollection of past, which, once lived, becomes illusory. A continually shifting present that can only be experienced, never understood, grasped or captured.  An unknowable future and end at which we are not present. We are, then we are gone. How little do we appreciate all of this. How little do we appreciate time and those with which we share it as it falls through our feeble hands.
 
Reminisced about childhood with Jamie a couple hours, had some laughs. Mom is eager to agree with anything said, about anything. This house, like the earth which houses us as we hurtle through space, is a different animal from day to night and night to day. Quiet, now. I read a while longer.
 
On the laptop, in the kitchen. Jamie’s wife Tiffany emerges. I thank her for sheltering us. She says we are welcome to stay as long as we need, adds that our watching the kids is saving her 80 dollars a day in childcare. I smile, moved by her magnanimous words, but say nothing.  
 
I return home to take my evening meds, check to see if power is restored, but no luck. Apparently the winds of this storm were particularly hellacious, more so than Matthew the year prior, destroying power grids.
 
I take my meds, shine the flashlight around. Darkness has swallowed the womb that held me for 16 years. I sit in the tepid shadows of what was once my home.
 
And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day.
 
..
 
Chapter 5:
A Labyrinth of Hours
 
“You sit at the edge of the world,
I am in a crater that is no more.
Words without letters
Standing in the shadow of the door.
 
The moon shines down on a sleeping lizard,
Little fish rain down from the sky.
Outside the window there are soldiers,
Steeling themselves to die.
 
Kafka sits in a chair by the shore,
Thinking of the pendulum that moves the world, it seems.
When your heart is closed,
The shadow of the unmoving Sphinx,
Becomes a knife that pierces your dreams.
 
The drowning girl’s fingers
Search for the entrance stone, and more.
Lifting the hem of her azure dress,
She gazes—
at Kafka on the shore.”
Haruki Murakami
 
I have commandeered the bedroom shared by Connor and Graedin. Connor is staying with his work friends, Graedin comes in during the day to get his toys and clothes, but mostly stays in the living room and sleeps with his parents or in his sister’s room, which has two beds.  
 
Sleep has trouble finding me. We search for each other in a labyrinth of hours. Still minutes pass over one another, like fish gliding in a moonlit basin, sliding across mounting seconds that produce no sound, only silent circuits of sinuous rhythm.  
 
I am filled with a dream.
 
For hours that bear the verisimilitude of aeons, it assails me, with curious intensity.
 
Moments of half remembered lifetimes emerge. Rippling before my mind’s eye like raindrops in a sea.
 
Struggles, against friends. Struggles, against foes. Struggles against the great vasting expanse, where stars and myself are all consumed by ekpyrosis, by the eternal wheel of fire.
 
I feel something within tense and then release, because I knew these were all the same. Friends, foes, stars and self.  
 
Across shifting backdrops, we make constant love, we do endless battle.
 
Wars of words, wars of wills, wars of might against might. Wars of silence and vanities.
 
We stand in regard, probe each other’s weakness, cup a hand over, to conceal our own. Faces and forms change, but the spirits within are the same.
 
How many times have we known each other, how many times have we loved, have we hated.
 
How many times have you birthed me, phantom friends, and how many have I you.
 
Come closer, embrace me, burn to cinders in my hands. My love, no fear has. I was not made, was not fashioned to fear, but to burn.
 
And burn
 
And burn  
 
We cross through many pillared chambers, like lungs of the earth, columns rising to heights swathed in shadows.  
 
We surge through tides of snowdrifts, where mountains pierce the veil of sky and clouds drift beneath our feet, merging with ice and air.
 
There are crumbling stones, worked and smoothed by hand and chisel, swallowed in seas of reed and coral.
 
There are the gaping maws of thrown down gates, the silent mouths of doorways, with a blasted and charnel blackness within their womb, whispers of gutting fires in tongues that rasp and chitter like chains, like the mandibles and exoskeletal limbs of insects, clicking across shattered, abandoned floors.  
 
I wake.
 
Sunlight filters through the large window. Concrete and plaster walls around me for a change, but it doesn’t feel much different than home. Only in a gale do our walls buckle as they did on Monday. Feels like a month ago.
 
No internet nor television, service has been interrupted by the storm. I don’t miss it, either. I read and spend time with the family or explore the town.
 
Make pancakes for the kids. Cut them up for the five year old. He has a second one.  
 
Assist Jamie as he cuts some sheet metal to replace his damaged shed roof. Hot sparks reflect off my skin, somewhat hardened by the sun.
 
The family leaves for a child’s birthday party. I read in the bedroom, make some lunch for mom and I. Mozzarella sticks and chicken nuggets that Tiffany no longer wants.
 
It’s interesting to move in the distinct society of another family.  
 
Sometimes you’re dodging traffic, trying not to get in the way. This, inevitably, fails, but the awareness is what counts, the conscious effort.
 
Mom is loud, she wades into the family, a bright bell of loquacious conversation, continually chiming.
 
I am a shadow, upright of posture, but relaxed, in a chair or standing with arms behind, still and straight as a monolith, hands folded together.
 
The family returns. I ask the children questions about their day.
 
They are startled as I transfer seamlessly from obfuse to manifest. They brighten to be asked their reflections and opinions.
 
They speak to me, rushing over one another, I turn to each and fix them with the depth of my gentle gaze and warm smile. Slowly, they are enervated.
 
Calm washes over them, for bed. I lead the boy by the hand and carry the girl to the bedroom they are sharing, then retreat to the one I have borrowed, for the time being.
 
~
Sphinx asking questions
Sand smooths away his features
Stone answers nothing
~
 
And there is evening and there is morning, the sixth day.
 
..
 
Epilogue:
A Final Perspective
 
“And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm is all about.” Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore  
 
Yet again, I dream. A dream within a dream.
 
Waters run between the stones at the seashore. They rush and retreat, like breath. Ships are departing, sails tattered and billowing. Each silent ripple waves hello, simultaneously, waves goodbye.
 
I stand there, waist deep in waters, toes grasping round stones below. I gaze at the ships, filled with wonder, so far away and unreachable, unknowable, as if they were stars.
 
I also stand upon the deck, gazing back. My perspective rises and falls. Longing fills me, draining away as the mists slowly envelop the hulls, as the mists slowly envelop the seashore.
 
Shadows slide across the surface of the waters. Ennui creeps in. I sag, I sink. I also witness this from somewhere beyond.
 
A third perspective, a final perspective, taking everything in: seashore, waters, mists and departing ships, as if I stood gazing from a window in a tall building or tower.
 
Darkness rushes over me, over everything.
 
I wake in the bosom of this temporary haven. The house is quiet. The family has departed, mom is resting. I have slept late. I follow the slant of midmorning light across the house with my eyes. I pick up the various items scattered about: mismatched shoes, children’s and dog’s toys, then set about sweeping the floors.
 
I locate the mop and give them a nice once over. I wash and dry the dishes, depositing them where they seem to belong. I wipe down the cabinets and appliances in the kitchen. I fold children’s clothes lying half out of dresser drawers and close them. I make beds.
 
The animals recline or follow me about, tails wagging. Braxton mewls for some attention, I stroke his head and smile at his obvious pleasure.
 
I read into the afternoon, before having a long talk with my friend Ebru. I close my eyes when she speaks and drink in her voice, which fills me with a calm pleasure. I am charmed by the sleepiness that creeps over her. I bid her goodnight.
 
At 7, I get dinner for mom and I at Publix. I run across Miss Destinee from my computer class in February. She embraces me warmly and we talk while I wait my turn to order sandwiches.
 
At 8pm, I get an automated call from Florida Power and Light, telling me that our services have been restored. About 10pm, everyone returns. I wait until each has had their fill of telling me about their day, before giving them the news. My mother weeps with gratitude, hugs and kisses everyone. We say our thanks. I load up the car and we return home.
 
~
Hair of silken night
Still eyes of melancholy  
Memory holds her  
~
 
Lights on in neighbors’ windows. Our porch light, finally illuminated and welcoming with its familiar radiance. Almost reminds me of the dogs’ eagerly wagging tails or the cat’s cries for attention and silent appreciation upon reception.
 
Mom goes inside, the air conditioners had been left on, and the swelter of recent days has been banished by an exorcism of the electrically cooled atmosphere.
 
We set about to cleaning and reordering our home. I mix a solution of water, soap, baking soda and a bit of bleach and wipe down every surface of the refrigerator. I wash and dry the containers that had been emptied of spoiled food. I plug in the vacuum cleaner/steamer and give the floors a good once over. I make the beds.  
 
Midnight. I lie down, close my eyes and rest.
 
And there was evening and there was morning, the seventh day. And it was good.
 
..
 
Aftermath of Irma
The small and insignificant events of a small and insignificant life
By
Daniel Christensen
Sometimes writing as
The Fire Elemental
 
..
 
“A revelation leaps over the borders of everyday. A life without revelation is no life at all. What you need to do is leap from reason that observes to reason that acts. That’s what’s critical.” Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore
 
Copyright © 2017 by Daniel Christensen. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher.