Hurricane Irene

I've been through a lot of strange weather in the past few months but I never thought I'd have to survive a hurricane...more like a "hurricane."

My life was hot and sweaty until I got to Oklahoma.  Then it just turned into hot, sweaty, and sticky.  And windy.  It all made sense considering the day before I arrived in that midwestern sprawl of a city there were tornadoes twirling through it.

Then I drove to Arkansas where I was met with more humidity and a temperature that made you want to just sit down on the pavement and wait to walk the last 10 minutes to wherever you were going.  Time moved so slowly there that I would've thought it normal to see someone just stop walking, stare in the direction towards where they were walking, then slide down to the ground and inhabit a square of sidewalk until the sun went down and it was deemed cool enough to continue onwards.

New Orleans was too hot and too humid.  I didn't realize it was possible to have weather like this.  By this time I was growing accustomed to the humidity but not to the record-breaking temperatures.  I'm pretty sure mercury was trying to spite all of the area's inhabitants by raising itself as high as it possibly could.  One particular day was so hot that I - and being from Sacramento where the weather normally flirts with 100 degrees regularly in the summer didn't help - told Christo we needed to leave the street fair early and stay inside with the AC on all day.  I was practicing my homegrown, suburban housewife skills...I can forgive myself only for the fact that that was the day the city broke the record for heat.  In NOLA I also got my first bouts of summer rain for the roadtrip.  Rain in California in the summer doesn't exist.  It's a hard thing to get used to.  It practically ruins a California girl's summer day.

Birmingham was more heat but luckily I scored big time with my lovable hosts who both were firm believers in a cold AC all day, every day.  It was also my first time on the trip where I had to wait for it to stop raining for me to go swimming.  This is also a strange thing for a California girl.  Almost incomprehensible.

From then on it was me and the rain dancing a delicate waltz with the heat being an ever-foreboding presence waiting and ready to slip in at whatever chance it got.

Then comes news that there's a hurricane coming.

A hurricane is coming? To New York?

My first discussion about this conundrum with Eleni proved our California-ness.

"Fuckin' global warming."

No one here took it seriously.  Everyone's prediction was that it would pass us up or be too weak once it got here.  Then, the day before it was supposed to hit, everyone started to take notice.  News anchors and reporters were urging everyone to watch the weather reports and pay close attention to the path our new friend, Irene, was paving towards us.  After work on Friday all of the markets were packed full of scurrying New Yorkers tossing whatever they deemed hurricane-worthy into their mini baskets and creating lines for the registers that snaked around various aisles.

The next morning I went to the market and didn't know what to buy.  The city was shutting down at noon more or less since MTA was stopping all subway and bus service and the world knows that New Yorkers don't own cars.  Effectively, we all were being put on house arrest.  I ended up buying what I normally buy at the market for the week: a lot of vegetables, even more fruit, bagels, a loaf of bread, almond milk, pita chips, hummus, a few other items that I know my mum keeps in her pantry.  For some reason the only thing I thought hurricane-worthy was a box of Pop Tarts.  You can't argue with that.

I spent all day cooped up in my bedroom watching "Mad Men" and texting Eleni a couple rooms over about how we both believed our butts were truly glued to our beds and our eyes couldn't be turned away from Don Draper for more than one minute at a time.  Or two minutes if it involved getting up for a beer.

All four of us that live in my apartment - the two California girls and the two windy city ladies - cooked dinner.  We attempted to do it together but there were too many of us in the kitchen so we took turns and all created our own dishes.  We reflected on the hilarity of it taking a hurricane to get all of us to sit down and eat together for once.  Every once in awhile we'd stand by our 7-foot tall windows and subdue our jealousy of people walking around outside simply for the fact that they were walking around.

Eventually we all fell asleep fully updated on where the hurricane was, its wind speeds, how much rain was expected, and how soon it would be before the hurricane hit.  I woke up three times in the middle of the night and tried to look out my window but only saw rain in the light's reflection on the wall across the way.  I heard wind but nothing out of the ordinary.

When I woke up it was as if Saturday had never happened.  We were still being told to remain inside and that many areas of NY/NJ had substantial flooding and damage but that didn't match what we saw out of our window.  One of my roommates even complained that she had slept through the hurricane.  Another one commented on the amount of food we had in our house...we figured we'd last a month if we rationed it well but that our liquor supply would definitely be the first thing to run out.

I ended up being called into work that night.  Subways were still non-functional but the restaurant paid for all of the employees' taxis to and from their shift.  I watched mini tornadoes form up and down the street from my perch at the hostess stand.  It ended up being really busy at work because everyone was sick of sitting inside.

In all it turned out to be a dud and New Yorkers acted exactly how New Yorkers would: they ignored the problem until they couldn't any longer, overreacted, then when it was over they said, "What the fuck?" and continued on with life like nothing had happened.  That's pretty much how life is here.  A lot of "what the fuck?" and nonchalance.  I like it.  I always knew I had a California girl's personality and an east coaster's mentality.

But, anyway...I survived my first hurricane.  In New York.  I even haggled with a cabbie over my cab fare and won.  I'm pretty sure New York has accepted me now.

What is it all for?

While wiling away the brief, blinking moments of nothing in my life that are quickly killing even themselves, I was asked an interesting question.  The conversation had kept running long past the metaphorical last buzzer and we turned into those two shadows in the back of the gym that no one notices as they lock up...but they don't notice themselves either.  It was a Saturday night that was too chock-full of options that the two of us decided to avoid being overwhelmed and sat camped out together for hours trying to share life updates somewhere between the sarcasm and laughter.

"But do you still even consider yourself on this journey to find a home?"

I'm running, I've found my groove, there's no stopping and - BAM. Did someone just hurl a bucket of ice water on my face?

My first reaction was to wonder why my friend who knows me so well would even ask me that question.  What kind of question is that? Of course I'm still on my journey.  This isn't where I planned to end up.  This city did not embrace me as I entered.  There was no cuddling in the warmth of my bed while it was bitingly cold outside...no comfort.

"I do because I still feel like I haven't come to a complete stop.  I feel that there's something more, somewhere out there that I need to get to."

But does that still make this the original journey I started?

"I should stop saying I'm still on my journey. I am on a journey. Life is a journey, of course. Whatever. But that part of my life, that escape, that fleeing that I needed has ended.  I guess I've started a different journey."
"I think so, too. Your journey has ended.  This is your new life, Kaitlin. You'd better get used to it."

While I inwardly chuckled at this comment coming out of this person who continuously makes fun of my Seminar-minded musings, I was reminded of the comment that his friend told me months ago (oh, how times does sprint) while paused in Alabama: "Your adventure should be all about love."

And it has been.  That's truly what it came down to in the end of it all.  And if this journey within the greater journey of life has any indication of what life as a whole is all about...well, I think you know where this is headed.

But it's true. This adventure has been about love.  It is the explanation of everything my fleeing has been about.  It has been about learning to slow down in the midst of life speeding up around you.  Breathing.  It's when you slow down and are able to truly see what's happening around you because you no longer are fretting about what comes next that you learn love.  You pursue.  You pursue love.  You pursue love to consume your own self.

Internally I was fighting myself.  I was at a point where I was moving and my world around me wasn't.  Northern California already had me firm in its grip, talons around my ankle, and I was drowning in that last bit of water that pops as it gurgles down the drain.  I would have given myself 6 more months there before I slipped down that drain and set up roots.  I saw all of it happening and for a long time I felt like there was nothing I could do about it.  I was a little kid that was so excited for my new bouncy ball only to toss it to the floor and realize that it didn't bounce.  It was accept or get out and I didn't have long to decide before it was decided for me by the invisible forces that trap in all Californians within their nets simply because it's California.

So I started to pursue love.  I'm still not quite sure of what that love was - and is - but it had something to do with my continual amazement at life's possibilities.  I have a love for testing limits.  I don't want to live in a world of imposed limits that don't even have the nerve to justify themselves.  It has something to do with Jon's description of romantic love:  "It's worth it to stay interested in case it's real."  But that applies to any type of love.  And since life is defined by love then it's safe to say that I should stay interested in life in case it's real.

Now you're thinking about all of this.  Maybe re-reading portions. You never thought you'd turn into a Gael, did you?  Welcome to the Seminar disease!

Anyway...this love journey was only realized once I stopped to look at everything happening around me.  There's no better way to describe it than to compare it to the upside-down truck route sign from Birmingham (wow, way to make a lot of appearances in this post, Alabama).

We were trying to get somewhere.  You have to drive everywhere you go.  For some reason Alabama and California wanted to be lovers and decided their children would be forever public transit malnourished.  You drive fast because you can.  You make a lot of superfluous turns.  You pass a lot of warehouses and vacant, rusting buildings.

We were pondering what Alabama was.  How does one describe it simply?  At that perfect moment in the conversation where there is an awkward silence, one where both people feel the need to say something but don't, we stopped at a stop sign.  I was already perfecting my California roll, Birmingham-style because I was rushing.  I looked up to my right.  He looked up to his right.  Instant, synchronized laughter ensued.

"That's what Alabama is right there.  That's Alabama."

Or at least that's what sounded like came out of his mouth between explosions of laughter at the absurdity of it all.