introspective periscope : peeking inside since Y2K ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- monsoon. 3:36 p.m. - 2004-09-19 "and i've been frantically piling up sandbags against the flood waters of fatigue and insecurity"~ani difranco i wore my sneakers to work on dress down day friday. i work at a place that has a dress down day and that makes me feel slightly amused. the only difference in our attire on friday is that we wear sneakers instead of other less casual shoes. we wear the same kind of clothes that we do monday through thursday. i find it amusing that by changing our shoes, we are dressed down.
(forgive my probably seeming lack of congruity in the stream of conciousness that is this giddy afternoon.....but like i was saying:) i wore my sneakers on friday. i awoke to light rain...the alleyway pavement glistening in the orange foggy glow of the street light as my eyes adjusted to glow of the nightlight in the bathroom. i like the sound of rain before the sun rises and the smell of my bathroom before anyone has woken up....the scents of soap and lotions. i turned on the hot water and waited for the room to be warm with foggy mist and moisture, glowing lime green in the christmas green bulb over the sink. i stepped in, regarding my last weekday morning before the weekend could begin, reveling in having made it through what was turning out to be the most endless week ever. soapy, lathering deftly. i decided to wear my sneakers because i didn't want my birkenstocks to get went in the rain. it rained through the morning. i bought my REM tickits and as i waited for the credit card to be charged, i stared at the rain running on the window. at work, the rain tapped and hammered on the tar roof of our office. even over the hum of the looms, relaxing and mechanical as they are, the organic sound of water was pleasing. and sure, i agree (how could i not?) that it's been the wet summer. sure. but i like it when my grass is green all summer long and my herbs are growing for the sky with all of their might, lush and healthy. i like sunday afternoons on the couch watching bad television movies, forcing me to take some hours and just stop...just relax...to the music of rain on the aluminum awnings (hideous as they are). and it hasn't been so hot that i could die, teaching me to embrace the heat when it comes along. so you're not hearing any complaints from this gallery about this summer's weather. and when i went on my lunch break, driving in cranberry and aiming for puddles if only to watch the splash...when i went, the creek by my mother's neighborhood wasn't quite so high that the water seemed muddy. the water wasn't quite so high that the drainage couldn't be handled. it was about four thirty when i talked to my mother and she begged me to get the dog and the cat and my friends who stay with me and head back to cranberry and high ground. (it should be noted that i live only two blocks from an already swollen ohio river.) she told tales of mudslides and inches of water on roadways...the stuff of hurricane floods in the southeastern united states. this is pittsbugh. we worry about the hype of steve teeling but in the back of our heads, we know that steve is from phoenix. we know that any weather is exciting to someone from phoenix. and for some reason, we let his hype and excitement drive us to the grocery stores to make sure we have anough toilet paper and canned coke. we love the feel of adventure but our fear is for the adreneline rush of whats-going-on. damn you steeve teeling for scaring us but thank you for giving us something to live for, scream my neighbors as they sit on their porches and place bets on when the river will be in the front yard.....knowing full well that flooding just doesn't happen in this town. at least not like Steve Teeling was suggesting on the television. but then diane came into my office and said that she wasn't leaving work but staying overnight in her office. she had no pillow, but she did have a sleeping bag. they'd closed the turnpike and route 8 and there were no open routes for her to get home. i told her to stay with my mother. i gave her the directions. it was true. and steve teeling must have smiled in pleasure at those who doubted him as the flood waters began to rise. there was a mudslide on the highway that tobers and i take home from work. we heard just before we were about to leave cranberry. there were mudslides everywhere. roads indeed were flooding over and water-logged. attempts to make cell phone calls became impossible. we agreed to stay in cranberry for the night. i finally got through to my friends' voicemailboxes and left messages to let my dog out and please close my windows. we stopped by wal-mart, realizing how quickly we were riding the hype, for frozen pizza and milk and eggs and bread and pajamas, relieved in one-stop shopping. we bedded down at my mother's and waited for she and my boss to arrive. we watched the news in disbelief. the next morning, they told us that the waters were going to crest later and rise higher than they'd thought initially. but the rain had stopped and the sky was completely clear. the temperature was steady and breezy and the air was crisp like october and not just the last week of summer. we drove home, taking it in. nine a.m. and it was another world from when we left our house the previous morning. the river floated closer to the bottom of the bridge. the boats seemed bigger in this new perspective. objects and debris rushed past and down-river. lanes of neville island were closed as volunteer firetrucks pumped water out of man-holes in the street. we'd had a small leak in the roof and our downstairs neighbor had a good bit of water trickle in from under the floor but he'd cleaned it up and the leak seemed to have stopped for the time being and everything was spared and dry already. we sipped coffee outside in our pajamas and chased our own tails in the storm-excitement energy that overhwhemed us. two blocks away, the river raged by more quickly than we probably realized. we biked around town taking in the catastrophic damage images with deep realization that our town had gotten off rather easily compared to further upriver, where dams were stressed and complete homes under water. the afternoon was getting full when the fire alarm rang loudly. there was a pause and then the rush of sirens, closer to our house and neighborhood from several directions. news must travel quickly on this side of the tracks because a crowd had already gathered at the end of the block among the fire trucks and police car. they hadn't even bothered to send and ambulance. someone had spotted a dead body. they'd already pulled a body from the river last night. it was badly decomposed, they said on the news...and was not associated with the actual flooding. everyone was talking with strangers, offering their bits of what they'd heard on any of the news buffet's channels. everyone had their version of some part of what was going on. a man turned and told us that he'd been working upriver with some of the rescues of the previous night. he told us how they'd lost a boy...probably no more than twelve. he' d hung on to a tree. they'd brought a helicopter in and everything but they couldn't get him. it had gotten dark when they lost him. he was wondering if this could be that boy's body. a trio of white haired women huddled together, pulling their early fall jackets around them snugly. how will they get the body out, they asked us. will they dive in? we stared and shook our heads and shrugged. we got back on our bikes and rode down to the dock, looking over the edge at the water and watching things bob and float by with a swift churning we'd never before seen. it was then that i realized the immensity of it. it was then that i realized exactly in which direction the river flows as we're looking at it....i'd always thought it flowed the other way. i realized the amount of water we had yet to see. i realized why they were sandbagging the Hilton. today, the sky is the same aqua blue. the air is as crisp and clean as can be. the hum of bilge pumps along the shore gives the air a buzz. we watch the football game and the water begins to feel again more like yesterday's news. the pictures lose their shock value. everyone has stored away this important memory file in case someone on monday should ask "where were you when the floods came" like trained monkeys who'd sampled too many channel eleven news promotions. and as long as we don't think about the river and its bulging power just two blocks away, it feels more like an early fall sunday afternoon. more like we've had a normal weekend. there are football games to be watched and autumn activities to consider. life feels like its moving on to the next thing.... (but could someone tell me: when is hurricane season over, exactly?) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- .what came before. - .what happened next. a diamond at the bottom of the drain - 20 october 2017 |
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