Katrina lurking

I've had a hard time sitting down at my computer and writing a complete and coherent blog entry. I have at least three files on my desk top right now labelled "unfinished blog entry (1/2/3)", one dating as far back as my trip to Calgary and Thunder Bay in July, but I can't seem to construct an entry that reflects the emotional rollercoaster that I've been on lately. By the time I get half way through writing, my mood changes entirely, my thoughts invariably follow, and I have to start all over again.

So here I am at midnight, stuck on the North Saanich penninsula of Vancouver Island due to a ferry malfunction (which, admittedly, isn't a horrible place to be stuck) and I've been thinking about hurricanes and weddings. And the more I think about it, the less possible it seems to incorporate both of these thoughts into a blog entry that can really frame my state of mind. Like, I'm completly random.

But I thought you should know that although I've never been in a hurricane, I think that they're fascinating. I also get a little bit excited when one starts building in the Atlantic, the tiny low pressure centre spinning and becoming darker and darker in colour on the radar map. Is that morbid, to be excited about natural disasters? Sometimes when I'm walking on the beach --which, in BC, isn't the miles of white sand that you see on the Club Med brochure, but a rocky, wild, coastline-- and I imagine that the waves could crash down and pick me up, carrying me off. I like to think about how powerful they are. I used to let myself get tossed in the waves when I was younger, afraid and awed at the same time. Hurricanes, I suspect, are just bigger, more powerful and more awe inspiring. There's something extraordinary about a cloud, a mass of air that we can see on our radars but can't stop, inching towards a shoreline and systemically wiping out our carefully planned cities, our houses and our shopping malls and our climate controlled sports arenas and making everyone realize how trivial everything is. It just makes so much sense. I mean -- we've put people into space. We've cured diseases. We've conquered the living planet, but all that we can do when a hurricane rolls in is board up our windows and wait for it.

The knowing is the wildest part, to me. Earthquakes and tornadoes, fire ... these are all so unpredictable -- it seems more tragic somehow, in their randomness, that they can be so destructive. But everybody knows when a hurricane is coming. Meteorologists can predict, sometimes days ahead, almost the exact hour that the storm will make landfall. Unlike other disasters, this one seems calculated. Inevitable. People board up, pack up and ship out. The tragedy, therefore, is the people that we see on the news (and there's always a few of them out there) that look right into the camera and pronounce, "my grandpaw survived the hurricane of '48, he built this here mo-bile home with his two hands, and I gots me some good strong wire to secure her down. We ain't goin' nowhere. This is our home and it's my american right to stay.... sure, I been hearin' dem warnings. I'm not scared of no storm. God is with me, I'm saying. I don't need to pack up when I've got Jesus Christ"

And the mobile home gets shipped out to sea in pieces, three days later, along with the rest of the Florida panhandle. Nature asserts herself again, and I, from my vantage point in the interior of British Columbia, follow on my computer and feel both stunned and excited to be a part of it. Morbid, but true.

And my thoughts on weddings, you ask? Many, and complicated -- best saved for another entry. I managed to make this one work on its own, anyway.