The season is just changing here. You can see maples going off red like bottle rockets out there in the green forest. And there are the yellows coming on, elms and ash and ferns, looking like sunlight slanting through the trees. Which is what I’ve decided to pretend is going on. It’s too early for fall, for winter and darkness. I’ve also decided to buy a seasonal affective disorder light. The local Radio Shack has them cheap, because members of their family suffer from it. It doesn’t take much to make a difference in my mood now. The moon was full and halfway up the western sky when I drove into work this morning, and it was such a relief to have that extra light to give an edge, an ending, to the night.

I spent Friday night reading comments on Weather Underground’s Wunder Blog, looking for information on Ike. Comments were coming up fast, sometimes so fast the page would quit loading. There was a rhythm to it, after a while. Someone would call out for information on a town, an area, and there would be no reply, and some minutes later, there would be the call again, somebody, what’s going on? and then finally someone would come on and say, “it’s gone north – they should be okay,” and you could hear the sigh of relief that went behind the quickly typed “thanks.” Did you know there are weather blog trolls? They called them “downcasting trolls,” because they would come on and say, “oh this is so much hype – nothing will happen,” And then of course somebody would have to rise up and yell – chastise – call them out – whatever.

The posts started taking on a feeling of poetry of disjointed phrases. Some of it was the accent, the strange place names, a different phrasing. I hope they don’t mind my using their words…

Quoting BiloxiGirl:

It was never about the winds. Not sure where you are from, but surge is a whole different thing. Something most can’t truly understand without seeing the before and after first hand. Don’t focus on the winds. There has been surge and it is bad. Question remains, did the right people get out? Did the people who got the surge get out? But again, Ike was never about the wind.

A friend was talking to me the other day about how religion is divorced from secular life here, at least as opposed to how he saw things in Japan. I was thinking about that idea while reading those comments. Maybe not religion, but spiritual, all those people online, watching and hoping and talking, voices in the night, in a darkness so complete we will never see each other, or know it even if we do. If all those voices weren’t a prayer, a chant for intercession, a hope against all hope, a waiting together, then there is nothing.