creature comforts

i'm sitting on the futon with the lights out, listening to the cicadas, thinking back over the past two weeks, from preparation for the hurricane to panic to hunkering down to nausea and exhaustion to adjustment and now, seemingly, back to normal, what with the return of the electricity late yesterday. i feel funny whenever i hear folks get really really riled up about the power loss, especially when said folks have a lot of good in their lives, because, while the loss of power was very annoying and a bit bewildering -- eleven days without it shook our sense of time -- things are actually pretty much okay for everyone i know who weathered IKE in the city, and those nearer to the coast really got slammed. last night, the buzz of air conditioners filled the air much like the cicadas, and i wondered why. it was a rather pleasant evening -- perhaps to make up for lost time? i was saddened when our twenty-something neighbor reported to us, after day number 3 without power, that she wanted to get a generator because she was bored and wanted to watch TV.

we've been lighting candles, reading, playing a lot of scrabble, visiting friends with power to do laundry and eat dinner. we went for walks, sat outside, rode bikes. i had long, spontaneous, and much needed conversations with people i consider to be closest to me. the yoga studio where i study was open, so i took a couple of extra classes to keep myself limber. still, i took a lot of naps last week -- i am unsure if it was the weather or the sheer exhaustion of disaster-area living that wiped me out.

classes resumed this week, and many of my students are in bad situations. some lost everything. others are just as bewildered and tired as the rest of us.

i think the news about the economy (which seemed so distant until about two days ago, since all i could find to listen to on the battery-powered radio were hurricane-related reports) has further freaked everyone out. that, and since no one -- and i mean NOT ONE SINGLE PERSON -- i know would even THINK about voting for mccain and palin in november, i've grown increasingly alarmed by reports of their political support. how could two people who so many of us find absolutely terrifying gain the support of our fellow citizens?

i have no way to wrap this up. except for maybe these two things:

1) since, after the hurricane, the weather has been coolest in the early mornings, i took to stepping outside to sit on the stoop out back to eat my cereal and yogurt. the first morning, i noticed what i thought was a locust buzzing around. upon further inspection, i realized a gorgeous hummingbird was flitting in perfect geometric patterns, quietly sipping nectar from the strawberry-colored flowers that bloom on a vine on the neighbor's fence.

2) similarly, one afternoon, a baby lizard (of which there are hundreds living under the house) about thiiiiiiisssss big wandered inside the house and lept up on a photograph H has of a pair of broken glasses. i was in the bedroom, cooling off with a glass of lemon-water and re-reading james baldwin's Go Tell It on the Mountain, when H brought him in and gently placed the little guy and the photo next to me on the bedside table before heading off to work. the lizard sat perfectly still on the photograph for about twenty minutes when, suddenly, he cocked his head, spied a drop of water splashed from the glass, and, in one unbelievably graceful movement, leapt, bowed his head to the droplet, drank until it was gone, and looked back up, regally. after a moment, i very carefully coaxed him back onto the photograph, took him out back, and scooted him onto a long blade of grass. i watched him until he jumped and darted under the house.