Prepare for the Worst, Hope for the Best.

Hurricane Issac has been teasing us all day with some fantastic blustery weather; only now is it even starting to seriously cloud over and gust. The giddy anticipation with which South Louisiana (and especially my peers) peers at an incoming Big Storm never ceases to amaze/amuse me. Hurricane supplies consist mainly of copious amounts of beer and liquor, with some food and batteries as an afterthought. The word "hurrication" has been tossed around quite a bit. It's not that people actually want a destructive force battering around their and their loved ones' property, it's just that it's a killer excuse to shut down work and party hardy in some great kite weather.

[ETA: Just realized I used the word"peers" in two completely different contexts twice in a row without realizing it. Going to let it ride.]

Gustav was the last big one to hit BR and my first real "grown up" hurricane experience. Despite massive inconveniences and property damage, I tend to remember the post-Gustav experience fondly. The nervous-making start to my college career was postponed for a week of blackout (literally) carousing, barbeques, curfew dodging, bongo playing, and face painting. (And then when the lack of A/C was just too much, I fled on a road trip to Hendrix to visit a friend. Win.)

This time around, I'm feeling a bit more Dickensonian.

I'm just not feeling up to the kind of manic decadence that hurricanes provide a perfect storm (sorry!) of circumstance for. Which is kind of a weird thing to say. But I feel like I'm going to cut the other way, into an isolation-by-force-of-nature mode. I'm just at a point where I feel very lonely right now--not in a sad, pathetic I-don't-have-any-friends sort of way (because I do, they are awesome people, and I always know they are a few steps away available for party and support. Forever grateful for that), but the kind of lonely that I get when I am out of sync with my space and my self. If I can't line that crap up, very little else is going to be fun. This isn't a sad depression thing, just the introverted part of my mood cycle; some rounds are rougher than others.

So instead of partypartyparty, I'm going to try to use the storm to pitch the yaw of my madness, to howl into the wind and the wain, to amplify my isolation enough to counteract it. I've got candles, and I've got some things to say to myself and notebooks enough in which to say them. And so by god, I'm going to get some words out. At least until my hand seizes up and my mind hazes apart enough to let me stop.


Hm. More thoughts clawing about in my head, but I'm going to put this out there before the grid goes down. I've got my pen, my red wine, my vodka, and spaghettios. Let's do this.

Chronostep

Oh no Hello another year. Chronologically I am tracking linearly like everyone else and don't I know it. But sometimes it feels like trudging and sometimes it feel like a race and sometimes I can't sort out which is which. Time that funny thing time.


And of course some Bright Eyes lyrics, because that's how I do:


And the world’s got me dizzy again
You think after 22 years I’d be used to the spin
And it only feels worse when I stay in one place
So I’m always pacing around or walking away
I keep drinking the ink from my pen
And I’m balancing history books up on my head
But it all boils down to one quotable phrase
If you love something, give it away