January 3, 2008

Today we had the first of our “winter storms.” Read—where California is concerned—heavy, relentless rain, and wild winds, up to 80 miles an hour. Trees across the road. Surges of waves in the normally tranquil bay. Power outages for sure, up to a million homes, from Santa Rosa to San Jose. Traffic disrupted, accidents, freeway closures.
All of these things have happened. Hurricane force winds, said the radio.

At 8:00 a.m. I decided—unilaterally—to stay home. It’s a Friday, and I should have been at work, on a quiet, end of holiday season day; but when I looked out the window and saw the madness—tree branches and debris on my patio, my little cottage vibrating like a sailboat at its moorings, and just my imagination telling me what crossing the Golden Gate Bridge in a rickety, American public transit bus would be like—I took the decision. (See the photo of my usual number 4 commuter bus below…) Don’t think I had a free day, an enjoyable day off similar to a holiday. I was unspeakably bored. Because the power went out at 4 a.m. and has still not returned sixteen hours later; the light from outdoors was dim and uncooperative: Thou shalt not read, sayeth the Lord. Candles are of little use when you have a 530 page novel to plough through; and this blog is being written on precious battery time (3:31 at the moment, and I also have a film to watch).

Above all, what I want to say about global storming: the need to listen. The need to hear the sound of the wind and rain and to understand what the weather is saying: surrender. Stay home, accept that there are stronger forces, don’t try to go against nature. Light your candles, hunker down.

My landlady, bless her, was efficient, all day. Americans are nothing if not excellent copers, in some instances anyway—think 9/11, or the San Francisco Earthquake in 1989. (Katrina is another matter.) A tree has fallen on the cottage next door, just down from where I live, and which is part of her property. The tenant, a young woman who keeps to herself (as I do, I admit) seemed to be very distressed, despite the fact that the tree has not actually damaged the roof: all morning, in the driving rain, she ferried her belongings to her car in garbage bags. Yes, I should have offered to help, but I sat in the window, watching her go by, bewildered by her panic and by my own inertia. My calm due, perhaps, to memories of being on a 30-foot sailboat in such weather: the Pacific Ocean, the utter solitude, the trenchant knowledge that You Deal With It. Weather, unforgiving and implacable: you learn, you accept, you surrender. Her house is intact but she has fled. Perhaps the creek below the house, subject to flooding (although it never has), has frightened her too. My neighbor has not been on a sailboat, does not know that, in comparison, this storm is nothing. A downpour, some gusts of wind. The sheriff came, the fire department came, they were as offhand as I am. My landlady moved on to the next stage: fix it, and all afternoon a pair of brave, smiling Latinos chopped down what remained of the guilty tree. Poor tree; it would not have fallen again, given the direction of the wind; but something had to take the blame.

For me, the worst of the day—once the worst of the storm had passed—was the boredom. Without power: no Internet, no DVDs, no good light for reading. I slept (when the noise of the chipper did not wake me), I finished knitting a sweater. When the wind dropped I took the car into the center of town, enjoying the classical music on the radio. Eerie: there was no power in town either, I have never seen the place look so abandoned, so forlorn. Like a nuclear attack. Other cars circled as I did, desperate at the lack of entertainment, the impossibility of buying or consuming or enjoying. I stopped and made phone calls on my temperamental cell phone and found myself talking to a friend in New Orleans (though she doesn’t live there, and I did not know I would find her having a drink, overlooking Bourbon Street): fine weather, she said, we’re sitting outside, it’s downright Mediterranean, wish you were here. Instead, I was in a deserted parking lot, pondering the peculiar happiness that a power outage can bring, if you can overlook the boredom: candles, an eighteenth-century slowness to life. An appreciation of nature, of the present moment. I decided to go and visit friends who live nearby, once I’d been assured the roads were clear. She is 9 1/3 months pregnant; her husband went to work today and dealt with the nightmare of public transit and confusion that I’d avoided. I scolded him for leaving his wife; I’ve already been scolded by colleagues, he replied cheerfully: now, blissfully, a moot point. He won’t have to go in to work tomorrow, as it’s Saturday. We drank wine and enjoyed the candles and she and I agreed how boring the day could be, without power.

And yet I love this weather, when my fear leaves me alone: it reminds me of my time on the sailboat, and the intensity of feeling alive; it reminds me that we are here by the grace of nature, after all. And the planet, our mother, scolding us as I had unkindly scolded my friend. There have always been tempests and storms, and God knows in California they are mild on a global scale. But strong enough still to remind us to slow down, to stop our trying to be efficient and productive, to stay home with our pregnant wives and not flee in panic at a heavy branch on the roof. Life will be good: while I was at my pregnant friend’s house we looked out at the window at an uncanny light, as if the sun were trying, desperately at twilight, to break through the thickness of storm cloud. An apocalyptic, yellow, tender light: so rare, yet how privileged we were to see it, and to know what we were seeing.
(Storm photos courtesy SF Chronicle).