January 12, 2020: Earthquake Weather

Song: “Earthquake Weather” by Nathanson, Matt from Last of the Great Pretenders

Joe told me last year that animals can sense when bad weather things are going to happen. They know somehow. Sense it. I don’t know. I always forget to look it up. I wonder if it is like how people say chickens drown in the rain because they won’t lower their heads so they choke on the water. It sounds interesting and fits with our idea about chickens being dumb but it isn’t true. Or like how my grandfather used to insist his hip could tell him when it was going to snow. Entirely unproven but something he kept saying. That seems more likely than animals predicting the weather.

Laying on the bottom of my parents’ drained pool on a weirdly warm October day though, I thought maybe, just maybe, it was real. That maybe people can do it too, in a way. For crises. Because everything then seemed too much. The weather was too perfect. The neighborhood was too quiet. I felt too good about how I looked. I had done too well on that surprise quiz in French.

I should’ve felt great but I didn’t. I didn’t feel bad either. Just…activated. Like animals sense storms or earthquakes. I could sense something in the air. Heavy. Charged. It was like being wrapped in a cloud of low electricity. I was not going to be harmed but I could feel the current on my skin.Across town, a man and his son were holding up a liquor store. I didn’t know it then. I wouldn’t for days. But that was the first step in what was to come right to my family’s front door. So I guess my body was right. I guess. For whatever that’s worth.

To my mind, not much. It didn’t tell me what to do to help myself. It didn’t let me know specifically what to watch for. It was just a feeling. Maybe it was a warning. Maybe it’s just me giving value to something in hindsight. Assigning meaning where there was none. Turning a strange passing moment alone in an empty pool a sort of cosmic importance. Doesn’t change what came next. Can’t change anything. Sometimes it just feels good to believe in something big and special and strange looming over and around us I suppose. Better than just random chance and naked hate.

For some people anyway. I don’t know if I’m one of those people.