It didn’t behave
like anything you had
ever imagined. The wind
tore at the trees, the rain
fell for days slant and hard.
The back of the hand
to everything. I watched
the trees bow and their leaves fall
and crawl back into the earth.
As though, that was that.
- Hurricane, Mary Oliver
Today it rains “the remnants of Hurricane Beryl”, the weather app says. The lingering mass of a travelling storm system.
What is a storm system? A frontal system develops rotation around a central area of low pressure so that there is a warm front leading the low and a cold front trailing the low. These systems are associated with storms and thus are often called storm systems.
I think of things left over and things that remain—the affective difference between them being desire, clarity, intention, or other fraught emotions in rotation. The warm front and the cold front. The leading and the trailing.
Me: a central area of low pressure. The heart of a storm. An eye. An I.
There are the things I want to keep and the things I cannot throw away.
excerpt from writing exercise from week #4 of Narrative Shifts: on world-building
an Abecedarian. answering the prompt, “if the future is a wound waiting…”
a - apocalypse, apostrophe, awe
b - beholden, behemoth, be
c - catastrophe, calypso, compel
d - destruction, demolition, dumb
e - ever, eden, entangled
f - flight, fauna, frigid
g - green, grave, gaunt
The notion of a wound might circle what is being given and what is being taken away, what is kept willingly and what is stored unwillingly. The wound hurts with approaching rain. A twinge in the joints. The wound is a site of witness. A material trace. Part thing you want to keep and part thing you cannot give away.
I watch this performance lecture by Meyer and McKinney. They begin with many definitions of ruins. I laugh at this one: “Eileen Myles says that ruins represent delinquency, and that might be freedom. She also says that old tattoos are ruins.”
Ruins the skin. Ruins on the skin. Ruins as skin. repeat.
Skin the ruins. Skin on the ruins. Skin as ruins. repeat.
That was one hurricane
I lived through, the other one
was of a different sort, and
lasted longer. Then
I felt my own leaves giving up and
falling. The back of the hand to
everything. But listen now to what happened
to the actual trees;
toward the end of that summer they
pushed new leaves from their stubbed limbs.
- Hurricane, Mary Oliver
h - hell, held, held
i - imminent, illuminate, ill
j - jostled, janky, joy
k - kells, kneel, know
l - lit, land, loud
m - mind, mound, morphine
n - numb, neglect, nourish
o - orion, obsidian, ouch
p - push, pound, posture
Tell a story in under 25 words. Tell the story as quickly as you can. Tell the story before they lose attention. Tell the story before it becomes irrelevant. Tell the story now and tell it loud.
“Today the tea grew cold again.
Again, I let the tea grow cold. and bitter.
Today the tea sat for too long.
I forgot about the tea. again.
The tea went cold. As it does.
I was too busy trying to tell the story now and loud.”
Amidst it all, I took a nap. The sleep snuck up like the warm front of the low pressure weather system. The words had to wait. The rain had to fall. I was deliciously tired. Sleep was deliciously enticing. The storm air has a bewitching character to it.
“Today the tea grew cold again.
Again, I let the tea grow cold. too bitter.
It sat for too long. I forgot the tea again.
It went cold while I slept warm and toasty. toes and knees.
It unfurled. but I was curled up, dreaming the future.”
q - queer, quell, quiet
r - resist, refract, round
s - salve, send, sift
t - trial, tree, tender
u - upwind, usher, useless
v - veld, voice, veritable
w - whisper, wet, wild
x - in axe, in ox, in box
y - yellow, yell, you
z - zero, zero
Today the words are the remnant of Hurricane Beryl. The weather app sends me a red label rainfall warning. I think the rain is abundant song. Defiant chaos. The storm represents a delinquency, and that might be a freedom. Water as ruins. The back of the hand to everything.
It was the wrong season, yes,
but they couldn’t stop. They
looked like telephone poles and didn’t
care. And after the leaves came
blossoms. For some things
there are no wrong seasons,
which is what I dream of for me.
- Hurricane, Mary Oliver