Poseidon’s Trident
Starbucks on a Sunday morning. The sun shines in the windows like a strong god. To the South two days drive by car, Poseidon strikes the ground with his trident. Storm surge, extreme winds lash the keys, and the Florida mainland. Those who have not fled hunker down and pray. And so it goes as Vonnegut would have said. Life is like that.
Circumstances often permit one to live in the constructed world of one’s fantasy, the internally fabricated reasonable reality of which one is the center. Then a mega storm appears on the horizon, something wild, unanticipated, not subject to psychological editing, or technical solution. The foundations of one’s reality are up for radical review. The provisional self is blown to bits. One can no longer answer “I’m good,” to the query “how are you?”
A few minutes ago I swapped stories with a friend who prepared my cup of coffee here. I mentioned my recollection of being 20 years old taking a freighter in the Pacific that passed through the tail end of a hurricane. The big ship was seaworthy and the steel prow would plough into the high seas. When a wall of water, the residue of a wave would cascade over the foredeck I would run from the prow to the shelter of the forecaste to escape the drenching of sea water. It was a young man’s game.
A friend shared her reflections upon Irma. She expressed being mystified at those who easily, conveniently deny climate change. She and I agreed that climate change is as basic as the chemistry of heat. Heat drives, speeds up the rate of change, in chemical reactions, and in the weather patterns. More heat means more violent and more frequent storms. Her conclusion: “Denial of climate change is just arrogance.”
I am not that 20 year old young adult now. No more games. No more room to run, and the innocent ignorance of youth is gone. As James Baldwin said, “it has always been easier (because it has always seemed much safer) to give a name to the evil without than to locate the terror within.”
I must understand the workings of existence like a man with his head on fire looking for water.
