Watching Melissa with a conflicting mixture of mounting awe and horror. The horror is pretty easy to pin down: A lot of the reporting I'm seeing is outlining this storm as a direct result of climate change, and once again those most responsible for this get to watch as an already exploited people bear the brunt of the consequences.
The awe is very messy. I'm seeing hurricane nerds tripping over their excitement at seeing one of the most "perfect" storms ever recorded, breaking records left, right, and sideways, and their awareness that this "once in a lifetime phenomenon" (likely the herald of more such storms to come) is going to seriously devastate Jamaica.
I get it. It is *awesome* in every sense of the word. I think it was either "It Could Happen Here" or "Live Like the World is Dying" (or both) that first made me understand why @WEATHERISHAPPENING felt so on the money: Climate change is a hyperobject, one that exists all around us and has a very real impact on our day-to-day, but only really becomes visible to us as individual creatures when a Lovecraftian tentacle reaches down and smites a population... always somewhere over there. The distant suffering is just background noise until it hits *you.* And until that point you get through your day-to-day. And frequently even communities in the throes of such events are compelled by the economic structures of this world (another hyperobject!) to continue as if it is *still* day-to-day!
We are ants at the mercy of a larger force than us. Have we made it angry? Have we merely drawn it's attention? Do we even warrant it's attention? Any preparation we make only serves us if we are located somewhere that causes us to suffer a glancing blow. There's nothing to be done about a direct hit. What can we do but fall to our knees and repent?
#HurricaneMelissa #WeatherIsHappening #ClimateChange,
mindsets
Shanie MyrsTear
swachter
Coles Street Pothole
Poor 'Possum
Andrea
Trixter of the Moon Council