Sunday, January 20, 2013

What Now?

Sometimes I like to think I am an alien from space and that I have been sent to Earth with a mission- save this planet.  People would say "Oh you're crazy".  And I say, well, sometimes I like to think big.  Other times I think I am a human and I am small and I really don't know that much other than how to ride waves and catch fish.  Then people would say "that's more realistic".  But I will say sometimes I just like to think small.  Either way, in my observation from this storm, I've noticed human beings put much effort into building and maintaining walls around themselves.  And when their house is knocked down, or flooded, or gutted and the walls get flimsy or fall down, the number one effort is getting those walls back up.  I have to put those walls up again, so that I don't feel vulnerable, and so that I am secure.

Secure from what?  Another storm?  The origin of low pressure systems is not in a home.  Storms happen outside the home, beyond the walls, they come from the atmosphere.  This is some weird shit, but a storm is the expression of the mood of the atmosphere at that given moment.  There's some heat over here, some colder air over there, and the storm will be here.  And people will put up the walls again.  "I don't want to see it.  I want to be safe in my home and I don't want to see what is going on out there."  And they will have success with that.  They go to the mall and school, and sit in the car and it works.  But it only works for so long.  Ignorance is not always bliss.  You may not know the storm that made the water climb up the first floor, but you still get the frustration and despair of having to rip apart your home, and you still have the months of metered worry and concern of getting those walls back.

 
 
So now what?
 
One thing I like to do with fishing is present information and let whoever I'm telling it to decide how they feel about it or what they want to do with it.  Once the information leaves my brain and mouth, it's yours in as much as what your response is and what you do with it.  Blow it off, want to know more, say ah and go do something else, those are your choices, not mine.  I am just as happy catching fish alone as I am with a friend.  But if that friend and I are on it, and wanting to get more fish and just go up in that zone, that is a great thing.  I presume Oct 29, 2012 changed many things here at the shore, like the stuff that goes on in the head and comes out of the mouth.  When things like this happen, it can be just another opporutinity to put the walls back up, or it can be a way to get an entirely new view of the weather.
 

Global temperature rose abruptly starting around 1920 through 1944.  The 1938 Hurricane devastated New England, during the warmest year on record to the time.  The 1944 Great Atlantic Hurricane caused damage in New Jersey just like you are seeing now, it was the worst New Jersey hurricane of the 20th century, in what was then the warmest year on record to the time.


It is possible to look for the holes in the information in this graph, and to find an infinite number of them.  If you go into something with the intention of becoming lost, you will find "your wish is my command".  I know that looking at a chart is not the same as experiencing the black sea and crossed up waves ahead of the 1938 Hurricane or the 2012 storm, it just isn't.  Bars and lines on a graph are not the same as finding an inlet where your house once stood.  Reading the words '1944 Great Atlantic Hurricane' is not really comparable to what you would get out of watching the Atlantic City boardwalk get destroyed by 'an enormous 30 foot greenish wave'.  And in looking at my documentation of the storm of 2012, it isn't the same as my experience of being there.  The trick, the magic, is finding the way that most closely represents, presents again, the experience, if that is the goal.

2013 will start low can climb high.  Maybe 2012 was the end of something after all, at least around here.  What is certain is that 2013 is the beginning of the after storm life.