Hurricane Matthew and the Impatience by Kit.Fenix

HURRICANE MATTHEW and THE IMPATIENCE

By

Christian Kit Lee




PART ONE

Don’t know exactly how familiar a tv series like Family Guy can be to anyone’s recent memory. I had a point in my late teens where I was living off of my DVD player, and my many tv series boxed collections. One of these was the eponymous Family Guy. What does this have to do with Hurricane Matthew? Well, in my little corner of Florida, about 7 miles inland from the coast, just out of the storm surge zone, in the ancient Saint Augustine, FL; The house was built in the 1960s with a strong foundation; Peter Griffin made an unlikely “appearance” of sorts within ear-shot.

We prepared to begin Wednesday and Thursday by bringing in items that decorated the front and back patios, storing most of them in our section of the garage. An old blue cooler was filled with homemade ice in gallon Zip-Locs in the absence of ice bags nowhere in our radius to be purchased since most everyone clamored the local convenience stores and gas stations. Expensive deli-cut meats and cheeses such as Muenster and White American Cheese and a transparent sliced pound of BBQ Chicken breast were sitting in our fridge, and we decided to bag them as well, storing it in the cooler next to canned and 2-liter sodas.

The Washer and dryer were put to the work of cleaning as much of our laundry as possible. All things were in preparation for the eventuality of losing that most sacred of 20th-century conveniences: electricity. Thursday night, the winds came and the terrible nature dropped the ball of its foot in its first slow step in our backyard since its destructive visit in Haiti and the Bahamas.

Friday morning, the storm had grabbed hold of our section of Earthly soil and crawled its way along St. Johns County. Most of our neighborhood evacuated, and some had stayed. The rains were wed with the winds. Our electric managed to stay on till about 8:30am. I managed to enjoy one last movie before it got cut, I figured watching Kurt Russell lead a group of Arctic researchers against an alien menace amongst a violent blizzard in John Carpenter’s The Thing would keep my mind off the storm outside my window. No worse than watching a plane crash movie during turbulence in coach class, lol.
The minute the electric cut out, we lit candles, turned on our battery-powered flashlights and radio, and smiled for those first few moments of courage. She smiled wider than I did, Mom lived for this sort of thing. Not the destruction part, but the whole camping feel to survival. She played cards, and I read my books. We ate out of our cooler.

Have you ever seen the original version of the horror classic The Fly? If not, a brief summary: A man works on experimental teleportation pods, and one day, a horrible accident happens when a fly gets into the pod with him. Out from the other side, the fly’s head went onto his body, and his head attached to the fly’s body when the molecules got mixed up in the transfer. The original movie is still terrifying to me to this day, but during this storm, I had to smile in amusement, as I heard the supercilious sound of a half-laugh of sorts, coming from what sounded like Peter Griffin’s head attached to a frog.

Throughout Friday’s progression, the rains and the winds got stronger, and the Peter Griffin frog’s half-laugh cries grew weaker. Sort of like if Peter was slowly losing his sanity in the padded walls of a Victorian asylum. Lol.

Going to bed after skipping the desire for dinner, I woke up the next morning of October 8th.

PART TWO

The storm had moved North and had lost strength while passing us. The winds were still blowing, and our electric was still out. The sun was shining, and my books were of great solace. Much of that day was where my mind drifted. More so than during the storm prior.

I began to wonder, if most worry and anxiety in survival situations, great or small, stemmed from a base fear of no tomorrow. A fear like that is not completely without reason to admit. There’s no certainty the world or one’s life would end the next day while he slept, and I think it brings on the majority of bad behavior and questionable choices when the panic sets in. I came to a conclusion that if we hit that point, what if we simply act as if there will always be a tomorrow? The world keeps turning (at least till the Sun engulfs our galaxy as a Red supergiant long after sentient life on Earth is deceased), and new individuals will live long beyond our years. The Force will keep this cycle going as long as it will.

Forgive me for making another movie reference, it’s what I do. Lol. Heathe Ledger’s Joker portrayal in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight seemed to prove his point that Saturday to me.
“Introduce a little anarchy, upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos, and you know the thing about chaos? It’s fair.” ~ The Joker

The agent of chaos, of course, was the Friday storm. We have become quite attached to our technologies of instant gratification and comfort. We grew so attached we failed to plan in the instance of doing without. I failed to keep any semblance of patience with myself without electricity. I tried. But when I began to think “this storm will pass, there will be another day, power will return” I worried a little less, and latched onto my books to escape to other worlds. I successfully began and finished reading Neil Simon’s play of The Odd Couple in one sitting by the Sun’s light.

I did manage to reflect on one element of my insecurities, most of them stemmed from my affinity for searching for approval from others. I realized that maybe journalling my random thoughts instead of sharing them openly might help me document the emotions and ideas within for contemplation and action at a later date. I realized that maybe some of my anger and frustration spawned in my life situation came from openly sharing these random ideas and epiphanies that have no real purpose in being shared with another verbally without starting inadvertent fights. At the same time, they are emotionally driven thoughts. All of us have these of course, but for someone like me, left unshared they’d fester into bigger negative ones. As a Grey Jedi, I prefer to feel the negative emotions all but briefly, but the trick is to move on from them. Bring ourselves back to neutrality and emptiness of mind. If we pursue the negative feelings and dwell on them, that’s when we give into our inner darkness.

That night, we went to our rooms skipping dinner once again. In the hope, the lights might come back on sometime in the early morning hours. Which they did not. I awoke at 4:30am, and read more of my books by the glow of my flashlight, and fell asleep again till about 8AM. I did not awaken peacefully; I was ambushed by a nightmare that played on my deeper fears of self-worth and attachment to a female friend I hoped would become a lover. I wrote it down and let the feeling pass. Journaling the dream made moving to the day ahead easier. Sunday at 12:10 PM, our electric and internet/cable was restored. I learned to appreciate electric more, with a desire to need it less.

I am grateful that I was where I lived during this storm, I feel great sorrow for the near 900 souls lost in Haiti and the following days in the Carolina floodings. Friends of mine checked in where they could on my phone. One of them in Texas had her own problems to deal with but still checked in.

People who didn’t experience the Hurricane shouldn’t be thought of as unempathetic or unsympathetic. This hurricane was nothing for them to worry about. Just like earthquakes are something I don’t think of in my waking life. I and many others experienced Hurricane Matthew simply because we lived where we did at this time in history when it did.

This was my experience, not a giant change to my personal life thankfully, and more of a wake-up call and a call to practice patience and mindfulness.

May the Force be with you all.