The power went out, due to the overnight arrival and departure of a storm meteorologists have named Irma, a category 5 storm with wind speeds that gusted over 200 mph over the caribbean at one point, scaring many floridians out of their homes and speeding, or slowly gridlocking northward through the popular arteries of our state. Thao’s sister Huong and her family arrived wednesday night, and her brother’s in law soon followed, stopping in late night after we’d gone to bed. I was aroused late in the evening by the doorbell ringing, then the repeated barks of a small dog, and lay there for a moment trapped in a kind of angry wakefulness, before finally drifting off to sleep.
Thao was similarly discomfited, as was I, by the sudden engorgement of our numbers, though they soon departed and the house was mine again that following afternoon. I played music loudly and rapped idiotically over lo-fi hip hop music while cleaning up what was once again my sole domain.
It would be another couple of nights before Irma finally arrived. Thao had all of Sunday off and we watched movies and occupied different spaces of the house until the winds started roaring in the evening. Our power flickered on and off a few times and I charged the camping lanterns and headlamps that we’d purchased for other trips, and by the time we went to bed the power was still running, though outside the windows one could see the faint green flickers of what I would later read as transformers exploding, and sure enough when we awoke this morning our power was out.
Thao has come down with a minor cold and is in poor spirits, and made a languid grab for the ice cream when we descended this morning only to find it too soft for her tastes. I busied myself for a bit with cooking and cleaning before both of us settled down in the living room, her napping on the couch, and me reading through Lolita.
I floundered a bit today thinking of inviting our neighbors over for dinner, and of smoking a cigarette outside, of taking a walk and maybe finding a beer somewhere, but then needing cash and regretting that I’d put my cash cache upstairs with my latest emergency pack assembly and not wanting to rouse thao by ascending creaky steps, and feeling sleepy while reading and wondering if it was some weight of the mind I could lift, recalling the times I’d taken my friend’s amphetamine medication and how it felt as if a cloud was lifted. I’ve been thinking often of engagement and a daily practice with the aim of living a more deliberate, self-directed kind of life, though inevitably I bend towards easier pursuits, mostly browsing the internet, circumstantially interrupted by a tour of television programs, internet tv, trading the small handheld screen for the larger one in front of the sofa.
I’m worried. I’m worried about the leak that persists in our garage, and the required uncomfortable outreaches to our builder that seem unceasing, I worry about the hedges in our yard growing too wild, of the wooden gate doors that won’t properly latch, I worry about the pork I saved to roast and whether I should throw it in the pineapple marinade I concocted yesterday, I worry about the tart pastry dough in which I’d devoted a cup-and-a-half of flour and a stick of butter and its impending strike on my tart baking record (0 for 3). I worry about my partner and her lethargy, about our lackadaisical attitude towards intimacy, about our jokes around the dissatisfaction we may be facing with the others willingness to post things about the other online, about our differing tastes in style and fashion. I worry about the frequency of my urination and the state of my kidneys and evacuative systems. I worry about pressing for a lamp on west elm that I will not like, I worry about my choices taking precedent when it comes to the television, the furniture, the activities of the day. I worry about my inability to relax, to be in the moment, to release myself from the cloud that sits nearly unnoticed between my ears, I worry for a future stuck on this wheel of self-concern, ridicule, fixation.
Hurricane Irma passed last night and while other co-residents of orlando have reported trees coming through their roofs, of property damage, of disaster, we seem to be fine and fortunate in comparison. I am thankful for the seemingly endless good fortune with which I can count myself to sleep. I am thankful for the love that still is all around. I am thankful for words, for freedom, for expression, for this battery life on my laptop that allows me this small emotional evacuation. I am thankful, I am thankful. I am thankful.