... when you live on an island you become attuned to the sea ... even if swimming is not actually your thing ... and the wind too, everyone develops a sixth-sense about the Atlantic storms and hurricanes that pick their way through here each year ... tracking one hundred and sixty years of storms on one map paints a wooly palimpsest over the whole region ... from Barbados to Biloxi and Panama to P.E.I. ... right now I'm located somewhere in the lower middle of that cartographic Don King do ...
... the 2010 hurricane season is upon us now, but my instinctive sense of caution and writer's objectivity are compromised by the fact that I have not ... ever ... yet ... experienced true hurricane conditions ... there've been a few near misses, even some threatening last-hurrahs that made it as far as Metro Toronto, but I still cannot check that box on a bucket list ... I'm a virgin! ... that wasn't easy to say but there, I said it ...
... I'm told of 1995 in Antigua and Barbuda ... a serious year for storms, including the week-apart, one-two punch of Louis and Marilyn ... this season is getting rolling slightly slower than '95 but I see similarities in the patterns and trajectories already ... tropical storm Earl is heading this way following behind hurricane Danielle, now eyeing-up my friends in Bermuda ... the severe weather experts think Earl needs close watching but I'm thinkin' ... "hey weatherdude, what's with the initials?" ...
... if Earl were to become my hurricane tale ... would I come to reference it in the future like ol' time people name-check hurricanes from their past? ... the long remembered Charlie from 1951 ... Hattie which sacked Belize(then British Honduras) in '61 ... Gilbert, 1988 - immortalized in Jamaican song like Hattie before it ... Ivan, 2004 - that mash up Jamaica and all but sank The Cayman Islands ... the answer to that is, yeah probably ...
... having spent most of the day putting up hurricane shutters I suspect that would be one of my primary reminiscenses ... it's not a small job I assure you and there's a quixotic element to the task ... humility in the presence of indomitable nature ... brings to mind the weighty quote "when you think it's peace and safety, it's a sudden destruction" (Marley-"Rat Race"/Thessalonians 5:3) ...
... collective wisdom cautions me against wishing on a storm ... violent weather can bring misery and inconvenience too, but until I've felt that barometric pressure yo-yo like a mo-fo, seen a coconut tree bend double and witnessed a few random objects or stray animals becoming projectiles, I may feel I haven't lived ...
... in these islands it can feel like dodging bullets on a frontline as cyclones sling off the broad Atlantic divide 'twixt old world and new ... those around me can rest easy though ... my other theory is that I repel these things with nascent serendipity ...
... watch, as Mr. T.S. Earl corrects course and veers away the second he sees me and those formidable shutters I put up ... hah!
