Musings
an Online Journal of Sorts

By Alyce Wilson

I'm not about to complain, but Hurricane Isabel wasn't all I'd expected it to be. After all the hype, I expected something a little more dramatic.

I wasn't the only one. Knowing that I was going to be on the road today, both my mother and my sister called me to warn me about possibly dangerous driving conditions.

But the worst of the storm passed last night, and to be honest, it didn't seem that bad. Not in Philly, at least.

The worst I experienced here was a downed branch at the end of my street and the periodic banging of the screen door on the abandoned house next door. Usually, the piece of concrete I'd placed in front of the door does the trick, but this time it swung the door open anyway, three separate times, flinging the concrete several feet. This despite the fact that I even scrounged up a couple extra rocks to put in front. I finally conceded to Mother Nature and the door slams.

Wouldn't that be a great name for a band? Mother Nature and the Door Slams. Or just Mother and the Slams. Even better.

I kept an eye on the basement and was happy to see that it remained deluge free. This meant I could avoid the tedious trouble of carting all my boxes of papers and photographs upstairs. Even with The Gryphon to help me, this was a laborious prospect we were happy to avoid.

My dog, Una, took the storm in stride. Despite her phobias of everything from children to sewer grates, she's nonplussed by thunder and lightning. And this storm, violent as it might have been in North Carolina and Virginia, created little more than a restful undertow of wind noises, not even spooky enough to keep the crickets from singing.

Did you know why crickets sing? To lure mates. In other words, they're macking; getting down with their bad selves. Getting Rod Stewart with it: "If you want my body and you think I'm sexy, come on baby let me know." Think of that next summer night you lie awake, listening to the lull of horny crickets.

Alhough, to be honest, I spent most of the day putting together "driving mixes" of music (titled "Tangerine Moon Boot," "Open Road Dream," "Shiny Happy Crazy" and "Funky Pollution") and not, say, boarding up my windows or buying flashlight batteries, I made a nod to sensibility and called my dad.

"So, how's the weather up there?" I asked him. He said they'd already downgraded the hurricane to a tropical storm and reduced the number of inches of rain expected to a measly one to two inches. He sounded disappointed.

But this was good news, because I would be driving to his house the next day (actually today, but I called him last night).

Dad said that he'd seen people crowding grocery store aisles just to buy bottled water and flashlight batteries. "Didn't they learn anything from Y2K?" he asked. "Shouldn't they already have emergency supplies stocked up?"

"Um... it's been three years, Dad. They probably went through it by now."

He said he blamed the media. "There's so many media outlets nowadays," he said, "and they all play it up." He said they upset people, while back in the day, they tried to keep people calm. Yeah, cause all you need to do is duck and cover. That will protect you from any hurricane. Or at least, from the flying plywood.

Speaking of keeping people calm, I've got to be careful not to send out too many "trip vibes" right now. My dog gets very excited when she knows we're going on a trip, and she starts barking and running around the apartment. Of course, this makes it impossible to think. But I think she's going to figure it out soon. She noticed me packing this morning, and I must have something of an air of anticipation about me.

As I'm finishing this up, a friend of mine, Urdith, instant messages me to tell me that he read yesterday's musing on storms and the difference between cats and dogs. He says his friend's cat "was very upset when we wouldn't open up the window and allow her to bask on the sill in the 60 mph winds."

We agreed that cats are remarkably blase, even sedate, in the face of storms. I suggested that cats probably just figure they'll have better luck finding wayward, wind-sick birds if we would only let them out into the wind.

That sounds so much like a metaphor for life and how to live it, that I'll leave it there.

Copyright 2003 by Alyce Wilson

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