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Figments of our information: a letter to Lara
So, any of you who've been watching the weather channel have probably heard about Hurricane Ernesto. It's certainly been on my mind... especially with the anniversary of Katrina being observed this Tuesday. My good friend Lara, photographer extraordinaire and graphic artist of "Stranger's Treehouse" and "Backlit" has lived in Florida for several years. Her trials and tribulations with the Florida hurricanes of 2004 were the first personal connection I had with this particular variety of disaster. I sent her this note today and then decided posting it to my journal as is might be the best way to share my take on living in the land of the potentially screwed... language edited for my more upstanding readers...
(By the way, it just so happens I have previously set travel plans from August 30 through September 10, so rest assured I will not be here if the hurricane hits.)
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Hi Lara.
I don't have my phone with me at the moment, but I'm definitely going to try to call you when I do.
This whole hurricane thing is different from the inside. I've been fretting these last couple days watching Ernesto. It's not a feeling of fear, but of emotional pain... I feel like a hurricane coming through here now would be such a heartache. It's strange too that if it comes through here, I will be in New Jersey when it does. The whole thing has been really weighing on me. So I checked the 5 day cone again just now, which up until recently has shown us in the dead center of the five day path. Much to my relief, it seems to have shifted very notably to the east. Whew! But then (and forgive me for being slow at geography) I looked again and realized that the new path goes straight through Tampa. F***. This hurricane s*** sucks.
And here's the weird part... which I'm sure has ceased to be weird to you for a while now... I am stepping outside of my emotional state of the moment to think how strange the whole thing is. I was really pained by this. Then relieved. Then worried again for you and yours. All of this as a reaction to blips on a screen. I mean, there's a hurricane. This much we know. The rest is just guessing, and each new prediction that I'm reacting to is just another figment of someone's best intuition. Hmm... yes, maybe that's what I'll call these things: "figments of information". I think that's going to be today's journal entry title.
Anyway, I realize that at least in my case, this is all kind of stupid. The relief is as dumb as the worry, since my next NOAA log-in may show the cone headed straight for us again. My plans are made, so I need not be concerned with the practicalities of evacuation. The least I can do is wait for the storm to arrive, at your doorstep or mine, before trying to react to it. Perhaps we will both dodge the bullet and some other poor unsuspecting community will get the shaft. It's hard to know how to feel. But dumb to feel much about something that hasn't even happened yet.
Noelle
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Addendum: in the hours between when I sent this email to Lara and when I posted this entry, Ernesto was downgraded from a hurricane back down to a tropical storm. Case in point on the whole needless worrying thing. For now.
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noelleprice) wrote,
And here's the weird part... which I'm sure has ceased to be weird to you for a while now... I am stepping outside of my emotional state of the moment to think how strange the whole thing is. I was really pained by this. Then relieved. Then worried again for you and yours. All of this as a reaction to blips on a screen. I mean, there's a hurricane. This much we know. The rest is just guessing, and each new prediction that I'm reacting to is just another figment of someone's best intuition. Hmm... yes, maybe that's what I'll call these things: "figments of information". I think that's going to be today's journal entry title.
